July 13, 2025 • 51 mins
Ever wondered what it would be like to experience one of America's most pivotal battles the way soldiers did in 1863? Step into the hoofprints of history with Horse Tours of Gettysburg, a family-owned business bringing the Civil War battlefield to life through carriage rides and guided horseback tours.
Doug Stevens, a veteran who served six deployments between Afghanistan and Iraq, founded the company in 2010 as a way to stay connected with horses after sustaining combat injuries. What began as a family operation has blossomed into a thriving business now transitioning to his 6'11" son Spencer and Spencer's girlfriend Jamie, the self-proclaimed "Executive Director of Horseback Riding." Their passion for history, horses, and people creates an experience unlike any other in Gettysburg.
With nine carriage teams and 31 trail horses, the company offers visitors multiple ways to engage with the battlefield's history. Licensed battlefield guides accompany each tour, sharing stories that transport guests back to July 1863 when 34,000 casualties made this the bloodiest battle in North American history. As Jamie explains, "We try to set them up to be safe out there" while ensuring guests gain historical understanding along with their horseback experience.
What sets these tours apart is how they allow guests to experience the battlefield "at the speed of history." Many of the battlefield's wayside markers were designed to be viewed from a carriage, not a car. Guests ride on the same military crests where officers positioned themselves, seeing the landscape through a similar lens as those who fought there. Even more fascinating, some trees that witnessed the battle still contain bullets, occasionally discovered when chainsaws hit metal during maintenance.
In an age dominated by screens and text messages, these tours create space for genuine human connection. As Doug poignantly shares, they once hosted a mother with terminal cancer and her resentful teenage children who transformed from sullen to joyful during their ride, creating lasting memories amid difficult circumstances.
Ready to experience Gettysburg in the most authentic way possible? Book your tour today and discover why thousands of visitors return year after year to see history through the eyes—and from the backs—of horses.
Follow Horse Tours of Gettysburg on Facebook - https://www.facebook.com/horsetoursgettysburg/
Check out the website - https://confederatetrails.com/
YouTube Channel - https://www.youtube.com/@HorseToursofGettysburg
Find us online at DraftHorsesAndMulesForSale.com
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Good morning folks.
Stephen Haste here with HarnessUp Podcast with Haste, draft
Horses and Mules Boy.
We're getting a lot of podcastshere.
Recently I had a lot of peopleshow up and I got a lot of
opportunities.
So we're going to do somepodcasts and here today I'm real
excited about this one.
Guys, we got some folks here Isold a team to here this week
and they run a business up inGettysburg Pennsylvania, a horse
(00:21):
tour business, and we're goingto dig in with these folks, see
how this business got startedand just kind of learn a little
bit about the carriage businessin Gettysburg Pennsylvania.
So who do we have with us?
I want to talk to all y'all.
We're going to tell everybodywho each one of y'all are.
We actually got three people,so bear with us, guys.
We're going to have to pass themic.
Speaker 2 (00:40):
Hey, good morning everybody.
My name is Doug Stevens.
I own Horse Tours of Gaysburg.
I'm here with my son, spencer,and our executive director of
Horseback Riding, jamie.
Well, that's a big title.
Speaker 3 (00:54):
You know what he just made that up?
Speaker 4 (00:56):
That's a good title Hi, I'm Spencer.
I'm the manager of theVictorian Carriage Company,
which is also under Horse Toursof Gaysburg.
Speaker 3 (01:06):
And I'm Jamie.
Apparently, I'm the executivedirector of Horseback Riding and
I just got a promotion, sothat's great.
Speaker 1 (01:11):
Now let's dig a little deeper.
You are, yeah, I'm Doug's son.
You're Doug's son.
Speaker 4 (01:17):
His youngest son.
Speaker 1 (01:19):
And Jamie is your.
Speaker 4 (01:20):
My girlfriend soon to be wife, hopefully.
Speaker 1 (01:23):
Uh-oh, no proposals.
Speaker 4 (01:27):
That's the plan.
That's the plan no proposals onthe podcast.
Speaker 3 (01:31):
Let the podcast, know that there's not a ring on the
finger.
Speaker 4 (01:33):
yet it's the plan.
To be clear, the plan.
Speaker 1 (01:36):
Tell the story how y'all met.
You told me that story and it'sa cool story.
Speaker 3 (01:41):
It's my favorite one to tell, so I'll take the mic
for that.
And that is a.
It's a cool story, it's myfavorite one to tell, so I'll
take the mic for that.
So I had just saw a sponsoredFacebook ad for their company
because we hire well, they hireseasonal employees for every
season, of course and so it wasthree hours away from where I
was currently living and I saidyou know, I want to get back
into horses.
I don't know how to drive acarriage.
It'd be a new skill to learn.
I'm just going to shoot my shotand apply.
(02:06):
So I did, and I drove threehours down to interview and I
parked the car and I got out andSpencer was walking up the hill
and Spencer's six foot 11.
So I get out of my car and Ilook up and up and up and up,
and I said, oh, you're just atiny little thing, aren't you?
And he hit me with this big oldsmile and that was it.
We were pretty much inseparablefrom that day on.
(02:26):
We do co-drivers for eachcarriage shift, so you'll have a
lead driver and then,especially when someone like me
who had no experience comes on,you're there to take the lines
if something happens, or to jumpdown and help a guest or head
the horses or anything like that.
So there's always two driversthere for safety.
So every shift, if I couldswitch my shifts around to be
(02:48):
spencer's co-driver, I was doingit, man, anything to just get
some alone time with him.
And that's how it was.
We just became really goodfriends and you know, yeah, now
I'm a better driver than him.
Is what he meant to say?
Yeah, yep, now he's theco-driver and I'm the lead
driver spencer, you're 611.
Speaker 1 (03:06):
Yes, in case of county, here there's not many,
there's nobody.
611.
When you got out that day, Idon't think henry ever saw
anybody as tall as you in personI thought he looked scared of
me.
Speaker 4 (03:17):
I didn't know for sure.
Speaker 1 (03:18):
I was trying to be friendly and he said that's the
tallest man I've ever seen.
I said he's tall, but you knowit put a perspective to me.
I watch basketball all the time, nba basketball and I'm like
6'11".
You hear that all the time.
You'd be short compared to someof those guys.
Speaker 4 (03:37):
Yeah, those guys are like 7'4" some of them and
Henry's little kids.
Speaker 1 (03:46):
they come in.
They ask me, they say he istall.
I thought that was funny.
So how long have you beendriving horses, Spencer?
Speaker 4 (03:53):
Since I was eight years old.
Eight years old is when we, thewhole family well, when I was
eight, the whole family decidedto learn how to drive carriages
because of dad and everything.
The company the horsebackcompany started first where we
started taking people aroundtours of the battlefield and
stuff like that.
And then dad got hurt on hislast deployment and overseas and
stuff.
But he still wanted to beinteracting with the horses and
(04:14):
all that type of stuff becausehorses are very therapeutic.
But he wasn't able to ride atthe time.
Now he is, thankfully.
But so he's like okay, let's allgo learn how to drive a
carriage.
So we went down and startedlearning and I really took to it
when I was eight because I,being 6'11" quickly I grew
horses that I could ride but Icould sit on a carriage with any
(04:34):
horses and that just becamekind of my passion in driving
horses.
It was really fun and I learnedhow to drive a horse before a
car.
And I mean, I know you knowthat, but up in pennsylvania
that isn't a thing anymorebesides the amish community it's
not and now I'm able to teachthat to 30 new employees every
year.
It's kind of really cool thatit's not a dying school anymore,
(04:56):
you know let's take a moment tothank dad here for his service.
Speaker 1 (05:00):
We love our veterans here.
Thank you for your service.
Speaker 2 (05:02):
We appreciate you.
You, you're welcome, thank you.
Speaker 1 (05:04):
What was you in?
Tell the folks what branch.
Speaker 2 (05:08):
I started out in the Army and I went into the Air
Force.
I was a combat medic in theArmy and became a helicopter
medic and then went to fixedwing.
I ended up doing sixdeployments between Afghanistan
and Iraq and halfway around theworld everywhere else.
So we were busy.
Speaker 1 (05:23):
You're a second veteran in a row, our halfway
around the world, everywhereelse, so we were busy.
You're a second veteran in arow, our last guy from long
island, new york, was a veteran.
Speaker 2 (05:28):
Oh cool, that's really interesting.
Speaker 1 (05:30):
Yep, so you have.
You been around horses yourwhole life?
Speaker 2 (05:32):
nope, nope, my daughter was about 14 years old
and she got interested in horses.
So we said we only got a coupleyears before she gets her
license.
Well, if we want her to stickaround, we better get our horse
so you started this business?
Speaker 1 (05:45):
in what year?
Officially, our first customerswere 2010 so you've been going
15 years strong.
And then did you start spencerright in with him in 2010,
helping or yeah yes, yeah, thatwas the horseback side.
Speaker 4 (06:01):
I was obviously a lot younger then, but it was only
the five of us family because Igot mom, obviously, and a
brother and sister as well, andwe were the only employees then,
and at the time we lived aboutan hour and a half from
Gettysburg.
So every morning we woke upreally early, like 4 in the
morning, get all the horsesready, load on the trailer,
drive an hour and a half toGettysburg for like a 9 am ride
(06:22):
and then sit there for threerides which are two hours each.
We do an hour break in betweenand then we come all the way
home, get food on the road, gethome at like midnight, go to bed
, wake up the next morning for 4am and do it again.
So after a few years of that,dad and mom got kind of tired of
driving all the time.
So they found a place up thereand we started living up in
gettysburg, which madeeverything a lot easier.
(06:43):
Not that you have to, not thatit isn't hard still, but it's a
lot easier than driving an hourand a half both ways I love the
history of gettysburg.
Speaker 1 (06:50):
I love the.
You know it's got to be a coolplace.
I've never been.
I do have a cousin mitchellshout out to my cousin.
Mitchell, first cousin, movedto gettysburg a few years ago
and I do do need to go see him.
He's been wanting me to, so I'mgoing to come see you all
someday.
Speaker 4 (07:07):
Yeah, you're more than welcome to.
I mean, you've got to come inand check on the team you just
sold us.
Speaker 1 (07:11):
Well, we want to do a YouTube video together.
Speaker 4 (07:14):
Like.
Speaker 1 (07:14):
I'm going to come up there and check on you.
It'd be cool, it'd be awesome.
Speaker 4 (07:27):
I think the folks would like.
It always says gaysburg is asmall town with a global
reputation.
Yeah, oh, I did right.
Uh, but it's, it's a small town.
It's very pretty, very quaintand everything but gaysburg gets
about three to 3.5 millionvisitors every year, so it gets
busy, and it gets busy quick andcome fall time, after like
holiday season starts, it getsback to small town roots real
quick as well.
Speaker 1 (07:43):
But well, I've learned a lot about this kind of
talking to you guys the pastcouple days.
Not only do you do carriagerides at Gettysburg, you do
historic tours.
Speaker 4 (07:52):
Yeah yeah, we have a licensed Baffle Guide on every
one of our tours.
It's a two-hour carriage tourthrough the battlefield.
Speaker 1 (07:59):
So folks that come to you, if you're coming to
Gettysburg, check out this place, Horse Tours of Gettysburg.
Check out this place, HorseTours of Gettysburg.
Tell them kind of what all goeson.
You've got the carriages,You've got the horseback rides.
If they don't want to do that,I heard they can just come take
a car tour too.
Speaker 4 (08:13):
Yeah, we do car tours as well and we also do walking
tours of the town as well.
Any way you can think to goaround the battlefield, you can
do it and try to be as inclusiveas we can, because you've got a
lot of people that like horsesbut are scared to ride, and
that's where the carriages comeinto play.
And you've got some people thatjust don't like horses in
general, which you know.
I don't know why, but if peopledon't you've got a car tour or
(08:34):
you've got the walking tour andstuff that goes through the town
and Gainsborough's kind ofdivided between the town and the
battlefield.
The battlefield is much, it'sjust open land and stuff like
that and very, you know, openand monuments and everything.
It's very beautiful but peoplekind of forget that the battle
happened straight through thetown as well.
Yeah, like the Union Armyretreated straight through town
(08:55):
and you got gun marks and cannonholes and stuff throughout the
whole town itself, which ispretty neat.
Speaker 1 (09:00):
And it was the bloodiest battle in history,
wasn't it?
Speaker 4 (09:02):
No, it's the bloodiest battle in North
America.
Yeah, yeah, it's the bloodiestbattle of the Civil War, and
even A single day was Antietam,yeah a single day was Antietam,
but even let alone, I think July2nd was the third bloodiest day
.
Yeah, but each 34,000casualties.
Yeah, throughout those threedays it was uh, it's kind of
(09:25):
weird we say this all the time.
It was a very destructive anddeadly battle and you know,
horrible place during the time.
But now you go out therebecause it's protected and it's
beautiful.
It's great that this place isprotected, but now you go out
there it's kind of hard toimagine this big battle, this
big war, happening there becauseit's just butterflies,
(09:50):
wildflowers, deer, and it's just, it's very, uh, peaceful.
Speaker 1 (09:51):
Yeah, now we was in here, um, while y'all was out
driving man, your dad was and Iwas just looking at pictures of
gattysburg.
It's gorgeous, the sun setsover that battlefield.
I was showing him.
He said oh yeah, that's it,that's how it looks.
Speaker 3 (10:01):
So the sun rises.
Yeah, next level, what level?
What?
Speaker 1 (10:05):
is how many?
Let's talk about horses.
How many teams are y'allrunning right now?
Like, how many teams do youhave at the carriage barn?
Speaker 4 (10:14):
Well, with the new team, we have nine now.
So, yeah, we have nine teams.
We were not so much on thebreed.
I mean not that I am definitelypartial to gray Peritrons, but
we have gray Peritrons, blackPeritrons, we've had Belgians,
spotted drafts, clydesdales,stuff like that.
I know very much about thetemperament because, like I've
told Steven, we deal a lot withtraffic, with rangers, lights on
(10:37):
double-decker buses, rvs.
We're going past cars all thetime.
Cannons, cannons yeah, they do.
They do Living history thatthey shoot cannons on the
battlefield all the time to makepeople see, or have people see,
what cannon was like.
The horses learn how to dealwith cannons as well and
gunshots and stuff.
Speaker 1 (10:54):
When they do a reenactment.
Are you running tours?
Speaker 4 (10:59):
Yes, but they don't do reenactments on the
battlefield.
They do the living history,where they shoot one or two cans
at a time, but full-on fightingwhere they're shooting at each
other, that isn't allowed tohappen on the battlefield.
So that's about three milesaway, really.
Speaker 1 (11:10):
Why is that?
Speaker 4 (11:11):
Because it's supposed to.
Speaker 2 (11:13):
They believe that there's thousands of bodies
still on the battlefieldunmarked and so anywhere you
walk could possibly actually bean unmarked grave because they
buried them where they fell.
For the most part, I mean, theymade maps but not all the maps
were actually accurate and theydid try to recover them Years
after the battle.
(11:33):
They recovered a lot ofconfidants and took them down to
Richmond to the HollywoodCemetery.
There's a big segment of folksthat were killed in Gettysburg
down there.
But even I think it was 1996 itwas one of the most recent
bodies.
They were able to findsomeone's walking along and saw
a bone sticking out of the sideof the hill by the railroad cut
(11:54):
and they determined it was aconfederate soldier.
And a few years ago there was aboy scout walking along the
trail that actually we use onthe horseback and he found a
bullet laying there.
So it's very close to thesurface still.
Even a lot, a lot of the trees.
They're what we call witnesstrees.
They were here at the time ofthe battle.
If a branch gets broken becauseof a storm and the park service
comes to cut them up, quiteoften their chainsaws will hit.
(12:16):
Bullets are stuck in it from100 and uh was 153 years ago or
whatever it was.
Yeah, 162.
Yeah, 162 years ago.
Speaker 4 (12:23):
They said there was like 17 million bullets were
fired.
Speaker 2 (12:26):
Yeah enough to fill a tri-axle dump truck.
Speaker 1 (12:29):
It's really amazing and if you sit and think about
it, so you like living historyevery day.
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (12:35):
We are very privileged to be the if you want
to say the present-daycaretakers of the park and of
the history, and able to shareit to people all around the
world.
And with us, on the horsebackor carriage, we go at the speed
of history.
We go at the time that theydeveloped the park.
The wayside markers along theroad are actually angled to be
viewed from a carriage, not froma car.
(12:56):
That's the time.
Speaker 1 (13:00):
It has to mean something to you, though, being
a military veteran and owningthis business in Gettysburg.
Speaker 2 (13:06):
Yes, yes, gettysburg has a huge veteran community and
the people that come, we callthem our guests or our customer.
They're very big on priorservice.
I mean everybody comes therebecause it's very interesting to
see, as a veteran, abattlefield that at one time was
hell on earth, literally forpeople and their suffering.
(13:29):
But because of the struggles itunited a country and united a
people from both the north andthe south, and to this day you
can go there and see the calmand the peace that has happened
because of that struggle andbecause of the people's
sacrifices.
Speaker 4 (13:44):
The military still uses it for trading, calm and
the peace.
Speaker 2 (13:46):
that has happened because of that struggle and
because of the people'ssacrifices.
Quite often carnal barracks iswhere they teach people to get
ready to become generals andthey come down quite often.
That's not too far away and wehave west point comes down all
the time.
They do a battlefield tours andwe do staff rides, also on the
horseback, where the group ofthe staff officers of a command
(14:06):
will come out and we talk aboutthe battle and strategic
uniqueness, about the battle,about command and making your
enemy react to you.
You know all this kind ofstrategy.
In fact, it was originallydeveloped with five towers.
They could climb up and be ableto see the battlefield from a
distance.
Now we only have two and a half, but it's been used for over a
(14:26):
hundred years as a learning tool.
Speaker 1 (14:29):
My cousin that moved there to Gettysburg, his son,
which is my second cousin.
He's a military nut.
Like historian, he's a genius,I'll go ahead and say it he is.
Anyway, he's a genius and heloved reenactments.
He got into it up there atGaisburg doing reenactments and
he also come down here to MillSprings.
(14:50):
There's Mill SpringsBattlefield just like 20 miles
from here.
Speaker 4 (14:54):
We're familiar with.
Speaker 2 (14:55):
Perryville.
Speaker 1 (14:56):
Yeah, I know Perryville was a big battle.
Well, the Battle of MillSprings is just 20 miles behind
that window from you and it's aZollicoffer, general Zollicoffer
.
You have to check it out.
But yeah, you got the Battle ofPerryville.
You all stayed in Perryvillewhile you was here.
Speaker 4 (15:12):
Yeah, we got a family in Perryville.
Speaker 1 (15:13):
A lot of history.
It's crazy really.
So let's get back on horses.
We can talk about this historicstuff a lot.
I enjoy it.
But you got nine teams.
How many carried?
Do you run more than onecarriage at once, or how?
What's your daily?
What's your daily routine withrides?
Speaker 4 (15:29):
I guess I'm saying so it depends on the day, but
weekdays we have two carriagesgoing out.
Right now we're hoping to getup to four carriages at a time.
We just need more horses again,hence why we're here buying
from haste.
But we have two carriages thatgo out for two tours two hours
each a day, so we have fourcarriage rides going out, and
it's 10 people per each ride, sowe take 40 people a day.
(15:51):
Come saturday and sundays,though, we have three carriages
going out, two rides each, so wehave six rides going out, six
two hours each, so we can have60 people out a day.
Speaker 1 (16:00):
So I'm trying to picture this in my mind.
I've not been there yet, butI'm going.
Do you have a barn close to thebattlefield where you do tours,
or how does this work?
Or do you haul in steel or whatso?
Speaker 4 (16:13):
yeah, we have a property right outside the
national park limits.
It's actually still battlefieldbecause the national park
doesn't own the wholebattlefield it was so there was
a.
The farm that we actually rentand operate out of was part of
the South Cavalry battlefield,so it's kind of neat that where
our horses stay now there's anactual cavalry fight there now.
Yeah, and on one of the ridgesright above the property there's
(16:34):
actually still cannons.
The park owns a little slitherof land with cannons that
overlook the horses.
So it's like we're keeping thehorses in check.
You know, threaten them withcannon fire, yeah.
But our guests show up to ourproperty down there on
Emmitsburg Road that's where thecarriages leave from and they
park there.
We hop on the carriage.
We have a barn, we take thecarriages straight out of them,
(16:56):
hook the horses up.
Speaker 3 (16:57):
We harness and hitch.
Speaker 4 (16:59):
Oh yeah.
Yeah, that's fair too.
We get the horses from our homefield slash farm north of town.
We get them dressed andharnessed and put them in a
trailer, take them down to thebarn down there, because the
property that we leave out of iswhere our trail horses stay,
because it has a nice corral andstuff.
So we catch the trail horsesthere and then we trailer the
trail horses out to thebattlefield as well.
Speaker 1 (17:20):
Wow.
So how close is your house tothe barn?
Speaker 4 (17:24):
About 10 minutes, 10 minutes, 15 minutes you drive up
to the barn every day yeah,it's uh, the one is on the south
side of the town, the one's onthe north side of town, so it's
you just gotta cross town, butnot too bad I gotta get up there
and see all this now.
Speaker 1 (17:36):
Y'all are making me interested.
Speaker 2 (17:37):
Yeah, these are some of our horses actually spend the
whole summer on the battlefielditself.
Speaker 4 (17:41):
Yeah, yeah, the talking about the battlefield
before the park rents a lot ofproperties out for horses,
pastures or farming, and talkingabout how close the battlefield
is to everyone.
The park has strict rules abouthow they can farm the fields,
Like they can't go down deep andtell it up because there's
still active artillery shellsand stuff out there, so they
have to be very careful whenthey farm.
Speaker 1 (18:02):
Let's talk about the horseback riding now with miss
jamie well, good thing I'm theexecutive director of that.
Speaker 3 (18:08):
That's right, you are how many?
Speaker 1 (18:11):
let's talk about your trail, right.
How many riding horses arey'all using right now on the
string or whatever you want tocall it?
Speaker 3 (18:16):
we have about 31 so we can rotate.
We take 19 out for a full dayand then within that 19 we
rotate, so everyone can get aday off.
Most of them only work abouttwo days a week.
Speaker 1 (18:30):
So how long do you have different lengths of rides,
or how does that work?
Speaker 3 (18:33):
It's the same as the carriage where we do three.
They're all two-hour rides.
We do three of them out athorseback, yeah, so we start our
day a little earlier thancarriages.
It's much harder work.
If you're asking me, we reportat that barn where we rent, the
one that Spencer was justtalking to.
We keep all of our trail horsesthere.
So the crew shows up in themorning, we dump grain in the
(18:55):
corral, we bring all 31 horsesin.
We have a list of the 19 thatare going out that morning.
So they all wear biothanehalters with a tag on them with
their name.
So you grab the 19 halters ofthe horses that are going out
that day.
When they're in there eatingtheir grain, you halter them all
up.
We load up two differenttrailers.
We have a trailer that hauls 11and one that hauls eight, so
(19:17):
that's our 19.
We load them up and we go outto a campground on the
battlefield which is kind of ourbase of operation for the day.
We unload there, groom tack andthen that's where our guests
would come and meet us.
We do the three tours untack,load up, go home.
It's a long day, a lot of work.
You get really buff and reallytan by the end of the summer.
Speaker 1 (19:39):
I would say so.
So you've been doing it withthem how long?
Now?
Two years.
Speaker 3 (19:42):
Yes, sir, yep.
Speaker 1 (19:44):
Wow, how.
Speaker 3 (19:49):
Yeah, we try to cross-train because a lot of
people, a lot of our applicants,come for horseback, because
everyone loves to ride a horse.
Speaker 1 (19:55):
Okay, yeah.
Speaker 3 (19:55):
And no one really has driving experience.
So we do kind of like to getour hooks into them and teach
them how to drive so everyonecan do everything.
If you know a shift needsfilled or something like that,
you have a couple that, oh no,no, I just like to stay on
horseback or no.
I can only do carriage.
But pretty much all 30employees are pretty
interchangeable.
Speaker 1 (20:12):
What type of horses are you using for these
horseback rides?
Speaker 3 (20:16):
It's a mix Lots of just randoms, a lot of quarter
horses, some of the retiredcarriage horses.
We take kind of a mix of lightsall the way to heavies and we
got just little crosses, lightriding horses.
We have one that's like a weirdstandard bred cross thing.
We got some paints, we gotquarters.
(20:36):
We go all the way to Belgians.
Yeah, we can't do gated, nothoroughbreds because they're
too fast for our pace.
Speaker 1 (20:45):
Yeah, percheron crosses, just kind of whatever
If it's a good size and a goodmind, we can find a spot for it
for sure.
Speaker 3 (20:52):
Yeah, it's all temperament.
So if they have the righttemperament to go out there,
then we don't really care muchabout breed.
Speaker 1 (20:59):
When me and Henry first started together actually
doing this was in 2022.
He came on board with me fulltime and then in 2023, we sold
some teams and I went out toMeadview lake, arizona, to the
grand canyon, to grand canyonwest ranch, and I sold them a
(21:21):
team of belgians to do theirthing with.
They do a sunset tour to go ontop in the desert, on top of big
mountain and watch the sunsetand this guy named cowboy dave
plays guitar and sings up therethat's cool, it's pretty awesome
.
But they had a trail ridingbusiness there and I stayed
there three days in a littlecabin right behind where they
(21:42):
did the trail rides and it blewmy mind.
They got a step that putseverybody on.
They get on and they tie thereins in like a knot like a
stick and you hold on to thislittle stick and they tell you
you either go this way or thisway or this way to stop.
(22:03):
And that's how everybody ridesone hand like this.
How do you go about that?
I mean, I know you got you gota lot of new riders all the time
.
I mean, do you give themdirections?
Speaker 3 (22:19):
Yeah, and they don't listen.
But we try.
We try to set them up to besafe out there.
Yeah, that is the mostchallenging part, and the main
function of our job as outridersor wranglers or whatever you
want to call them, is to keep aneye on the guests and be safety
conscious, because more oftenthan not, each ride you're
dealing with 15 people who havenever been on a horse before.
So before we give them theirhorse assignments, we jump on a
(22:44):
horse and we do what we call asafety briefing or a demo.
We grab a horse, we mount up, wesay, hey, this is your reins,
this is how you steer, stop,keep your heels down, kind of
try to go over the basics.
A lot of the times what we'vebeen having recently is people
are not used to being in thesaddle for two hours and they're
definitely dehydrated.
So we really try to drive homethe point like, hey, sit upright
in your saddle, because you getthe kind of sack of taters off
(23:05):
to one side and then people justride two hours crooked and
don't know any better.
I guess, yeah, but yeah, we getthem on with the mounting block
.
We get them off with themounting block and we try to
hold their hand through thewhole process.
But I mean, horses are liveanimals with minds of their own,
so all we can do is try to givethem the tools and the skills
(23:27):
to have a good, fun, safe rideout there.
But there is a portion where,okay, here you go.
You know, you've got to kind oftrust them to listen to you and
follow your direction.
I just had a day you had a kidthat just said I don't want to
control the horse.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
He threw his reins over hishorn and said I don't want to
control her, and so she was inthe grass every four seconds.
(23:47):
So, yeah, I clipped the leadrope to her and ponied her off
my horse.
But people do try and, andevery now and then you get rides
where people oh, yeah, I'veridden, yep, I'm, I have horse
experience and those rides aregreat because it's like oh great
, I don't need to babysit anyone, everyone knows what they're
doing.
Speaker 2 (24:01):
So I could see from what you do, though you learn
every day oh, absolutely youlearn something, and it's always
something new yeah, I like thatdefinitely not something not to
do, that's that's true, we'retrying to mix the history into
the tour that they're having fun, they're learning, don't even
(24:22):
realize it, they're.
They're out there on the actualtrails that are documented
through photographic evidencethat these were where general
lee was or general longstreetwas, and the guide who does this
study and the testingapparently it's harder than the
bar test to become a lawyer iswhat we've been told many times.
But they gather and theyportray the story in such a way
(24:42):
that people will turn around tolook behind them to see if
General Pickett is riding up,galloping up to talk to General
Longstreet, because they are sopassionate about how they speak
and how they can draw you intothe history now.
So that's really really goodand really interesting.
That's why we love it.
We don't want someone to comeup and just give a canned speech
that this happened here, thathappened there.
(25:04):
No, tell us what they were like, tell us who they were doing,
tell them where they werethinking, what was going on
around them as we ride, becauseyou're on the exact ground, you
can see what they could see.
We ride on the military crestand you have to explain to
people what that is and how youcan ride and be close to the
action but not be seen becausethere's only line of sight.
At that time most cans wereabout two to three mile range.
(25:24):
So you need to be away fromthat kind of stuff.
But getting back to the horsesthat we use, we want the horses
to be fit.
They're like athletes becausewe do six hours a day.
You can't just take any horseand put them out there and do
six hours.
When we first started, thegravel they use is called antiem
base.
We would literally wear ourhorseshoes that there was
nothing in the front, it was thesteel just gone.
(25:45):
But we also prepare the horsesand what we feed them.
We give them high fat so youcan have the energy to be out
there, but not hot food to makethem hot and excitable.
We want them to be nice andcalm so that way people aren't
afraid to be out there andriding.
That's a huge thing.
You build it for the personthat's not experienced, so they
can be out there and be verycomfortable.
When we first started we didn'tknow what was going to happen
(26:06):
with the business, but the storythat my wife and I learned was
a woman came out.
I forget exact details.
It was three or four children.
She had a king with her, itsays to be blunt cancer sucks.
She was dying from cancer andshe was doing her bucket list
with her kids.
Her kids were like between 12and 15, probably a couple girls,
(26:30):
a couple boys.
They hated the world.
They hated the world becausetheir mom's dying.
They knew their mother wasdying.
They just hated the world.
We tried to get them into goinginto the ride.
Hey, are you excited?
They're non-off-lack.
They just didn't care.
By the time we got back, theywere singing on top of spaghetti
and they were showing us theirkarate moves.
They were having such a goodtime.
(26:52):
We knew their karate moves.
They're having such a good time.
This is we knew for a fact thatthey were going to remember
this for the rest of their lives, no matter how long their mom
lived and we knew didn't matter.
Whatever happened from thatpoint forward with their
business, we felt successfulbecause we're able to make a
difference in people's lives.
you know we're living outside.
You know so many people areused to just now playing video
games and people don't talk toeach other anymore, they text.
(27:15):
So getting out there andtalking to people face-to-face
and asking them about themselvesand you know a lot of people
have connections.
Quite often we have people thatgreat-great-grandfather fought
here or something like that.
It's really really interestingto hear their stories.
So that makes it interestingfor me too.
Speaker 1 (27:31):
Yeah, you brought up a good point there.
People don't talk anymore, theytext.
You know I text a lot of people.
I do.
I have to with this business.
But I've got on our websitecall, Call me.
I would rather somebody pick upthat phone and call me and
(27:53):
around here we don't see that.
You know I'm with yeah, I'm notMennonite or Amish, I'm with
them every day.
My wife's not Mennonite orAmish.
Me and her text throughout theday.
But you know, all of mycontacts in this community that
I'm with are Mennonite and Amishand me and Henry can't text
each other.
We never have, we don't.
(28:13):
He's Mennonite, he don't have acell phone we call.
The other night we did aconference for our horse sale
we're having and there's fiveboard members.
I called them all into thephone on a six-way call, added
(28:38):
everybody and we had a two-hourconversation.
You know, when the youth getstogether here in this community
the mennonites and stuff theymeet all together.
There's a lot of face-to-faceinteraction.
Did you know that is the reasonbehind a lot of the mennonites
and amish not owning a phone?
Because it takes away, takesaway face-to-face communication
with people.
(28:59):
That's the reason, and you know,when you want to see somebody
and have a meeting with them,you want the Mennonites and
Amish, they want you to have togo to them, because that's the
true way to meet somebody talkto them and get the point across
.
And that's a good point.
I like that.
That's yeah, it's the world's.
Speaker 2 (29:17):
Went to texting like crazy and they don't have the
personnel they don't have.
They really don't have theskills.
They don't know how to readsomebody when you're talking to
them.
Are they receiving what you'retrying to say or are you using
the words that they understandthe point that you're trying to
get across?
It's very difficult, but that'swhat's good about getting
outside.
It's a family, it can be afamily activity, and our
(29:40):
carriages it's like they'rebench seats that face each other
.
It's a group talk.
The guys there are talkingabout stuff that you can
communicate right across theroom, like you and I are right
now, and talk about what'sinteresting to you and what
you're learning about.
It's just personal stories,personal connections.
That's what makes it sointeresting, not just repeating
words or stories you read in abook.
It's the personal individualthat makes it very interesting.
Speaker 4 (30:04):
And that's a skill that I learned I didn't realize
I needed to learn, comparativelyto my group of kids in high
school, especially talking toall these people doing these
tours and stuff, since I was 8years old and you know you don't
realize how many people youtalk to, but it's well into the
thousands, of, tens of thousandsof people I've met and talked
to.
And it's funny because thefirst few years and stuff we're
(30:24):
doing it was more of a weekendtype, company type, stuff like
that.
And I go back to high schooland look and like we were just
talking about all these kids areonly texting all the time and
you go to have a conversationand they look they can talk to
you for like a minute or two andthen they're back on the phone.
It's like so it's.
It's one of the skills thatyou're like wow, you don't know
how to talk to people, you don't.
You don't know how to publicspeaking stuff and not.
That stuff isn't nerve-wrackinglike it can be for anyone, but
(30:47):
there's a point that youunderstand that it's okay, you
can talk.
It's not everyone's going to bemean to you, not everyone's
going to be judging.
You can have a normalconversation and have a great
conversation with someone you'vemet maybe a minute ago, kind of
just like how it was when wegot here with you, stephen.
Speaker 1 (31:01):
Oh yeah, you know I feel I talk to people every day.
So meeting people and meetingcustomers is nothing new to me.
You know I'm used to it.
But there are some customersyou feel like the vibe.
There's a vibe, you know yougot common interest.
Some people's just cool.
Speaker 3 (31:20):
We're vibing yeah.
Speaker 1 (31:21):
And y'all since you walked in here.
You know, since you pulled inin your truck, I felt a vibe.
You know it's cool, we're onthe same page.
It's fun.
We've had a great time.
Speaker 3 (31:33):
We had a good meal thursday we didn't what steven's
not telling y'all is that we'reall wearing matching friendship
bracelets right now, andthey're gorgeous yeah, shout out
to bread of life in liberty.
Kentucky and uh we enjoyed ourmeal.
That catfish I'll be dreamingabout it.
Speaker 1 (31:54):
That's right.
Some people may not realize,guys, we're talking to Spencer
and Jamie here and there.
How old are you, Spencer?
I'm 23.
Speaker 3 (32:05):
And Jamie I'm a cougar.
I'm 32.
Proud of it, I'll own it beforepeople make their own
assumptions.
Speaker 4 (32:14):
If it makes it better at heart, I'm like 48.
Speaker 1 (32:16):
It's true yeah, they're a young couple and
you're turning it over to them.
Speaker 2 (32:22):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (32:23):
Pretty much.
That's what we want they'regoing to run this business.
Do you have anything you wantto mention before we go off this
and anything you got that youwant to tell the folks or
anything Anybody before we gooff this and anything you got
that?
Speaker 4 (32:35):
you want to tell the folks or anything, anybody, feel
free to go ahead and follow.
Follow us on Facebook and stuff.
At Victorian carriage companyhorse stores Gaisberg we're
looking to really expand ouroperations, do a lot of town
rides and stuff like that andhave a brick and mortar building
eventually in town.
So we're looking for it toexpand.
We're looking to post a lotmore videos and stuff like how
Haste does here.
(32:55):
If you're looking to see theteam that we bought for them,
we'll be doing plenty of videosand all that to show off them.
And if you guys are in Gaisburglooking to come out, please
feel free to come and enjoy thetour.
Or if you're looking to drivegarages for us or ride horseback
, we always have open employment.
So open employment like so ifyou yeah, so if you go on our
(33:16):
website and you're interested inthat, we have an application on
there.
Feel free to fill that outfolks, you're hearing this.
Speaker 1 (33:24):
They just offered to open hiring.
You know how many people textme daily.
Are you hiring?
I want to be your apprentice.
Wow, hire me, hire me, hire me.
Folks call spencer gettysburghorse tours.
Speaker 4 (33:41):
There, I haven't you need drivers, I'm sure oh yeah,
the more drivers we get, themore stuff we can do so but
there's a lot of cool people outthere older gentlemen and older
ladies.
Speaker 1 (33:53):
Some of the ladies drive better than the men, amen,
amen.
I've got.
I'm telling you there was alady here from Alberta, canada,
over last weekend, miss Anna upin.
Oh Lord, I can't remember thetown.
Forgive me, anna, if you listento this, but she's like I don't
know how old she was.
(34:13):
She's a retired police officer,one of the coolest ladies I
ever met.
She still does all her own hay.
She's home right now cuttingand baling hay.
She's like I got to get my hayput up before I can meet the
driver at the border with thehorses.
This lady is a go-getter.
Last Sunday morning, of course,we went to church.
(34:34):
She wanted to come here.
She was here over Sunday,didn't have nothing to do.
You know she's in a cabin.
Yeah, I want to drive my horses.
I bought.
So I told her.
I said well, we're going tochurch, I'll meet you at the
barn.
You know.
Show you what to do.
You know.
Show you where the horses are.
Show you what to do.
You know.
Show you where the horses areand you drive them while we're
(34:55):
at church.
Well, I didn't show her nothing.
I showed her where her horseswas.
She grabbed her new horses out,threw the harness on them,
walked them over the tongue outhere and hooked them to her
wagon and off she went.
And it's the ladies like thatthat are tough and you know, if
(35:21):
you could get some ladies likethat driving for you, probably
doing pretty good, yeah, they'remore than welcome, send them
our way.
And like there's a company Iknow down in shout out to dream
carriage in chester, southcarolina, gail and her husband
mike down there super goodpeople.
They've got a wonderfulbusiness they're doing and
they're actually starting inchester.
They just rented a brick andmortar building, they've redone
it all and they're going tostart a horse tour of chester,
(35:42):
south carolina, taking peoplearound the city and talking
about the history, kind of likewhat you're doing.
And yeah, there's so many goodcarriage companies out there and
we sell them all the time andyou all are just a mix in with
them.
So welcome to the community,welcome to our family, and we
hope you come to our barbecue inOctober.
(36:02):
If you can get away, you've gotto come.
Speaker 3 (36:05):
We're going to try.
Yeah, we're definitely going totry.
Speaker 1 (36:10):
So bring as many people as you want with you and
everybody's invited.
All'all out there listening.
We're having a customerappreciation barbecue.
Get together october, oh lord23rd 23rd, 24th 25th.
Thank you, jamie, you're welcomebut, guys, if you're in
gettysburg, if you're going topennsylvania, go visit these
people.
They're super good people andthey deserve your business.
(36:32):
Go help them out, go take aride with them.
They won't let you down.
And they just bought a new teamfrom us.
I don't know if they'rerenaming them or not.
We had some talks about it.
I don't know if they decided ornot.
Did you decide?
Speaker 3 (36:46):
They'll have to watch a video and find out.
Stay tuned.
Speaker 4 (36:49):
No, we have not decided.
Gosh, jamie, that was good.
Speaker 1 (36:53):
That was good.
Yeah, that's some very goodadvertising there.
Guys, encourage Spencer andJamie to start this YouTube
channel.
Speaker 4 (37:02):
We got a channel.
We have like two videos of ourtraining videos on there.
Speaker 1 (37:07):
Okay, we'll tell them the channel.
Speaker 4 (37:08):
Yeah, it's Horse Tours of Gettysburg.
Speaker 3 (37:10):
There's a video of Spencer harnessing up a horse.
You can see just how tall he is.
Speaker 1 (37:18):
He makes that percheron look like a pony.
Go give that a watch andthere'll be more videos posted.
We want to get Spencer andJamie doing videos every week
and get a channel going.
It'll be awesome.
Speaker 4 (37:27):
Yeah, that's a goal in hubs when you've got time.
Speaker 3 (37:31):
Yeah, if these horses would stop needing fed every
day, we'd have the time.
Speaker 1 (37:35):
I'm calling it now on this podcast.
You do it, spencer.
A channel, you get going.
I'm calling it it now.
Speaker 4 (37:47):
it's going to be awesome and it's going to get a
lot of views and a lot ofsubscribers that'll be awesome.
So I definitely want to try thatand that's uh and, as you know,
doing all the marketing herefor haste, that the more and
more you can do, it just bringsmore and more attention to you
and like what we kind of hintedat before, not having people in
the world driving carriages andstuff like this, the more and
more we can get it out there,like the company South Carolina
and stuff, the better it is.
(38:08):
The more it's around, the morethe people see it, the more
we're kind of bringing that backinto the modern day world that
people just are on the phone allthe time.
They don't see the beauty ofall these big, beautiful draft
horses and or riding horses, youknow anything like that.
Speaker 1 (38:21):
Also, not many people see a big giant like Spencer
throwing this harness anddriving these horses.
You'll be a hit, spencer.
You'll be a hit hey.
Speaker 4 (38:29):
I'm Tony.
We got to post that video ofyou and I walking down the
hallway.
I'm going to put it on.
We'll do it.
We're going to put it on there.
Speaker 1 (38:41):
No, we're going to save it, because I'm going to
come to Gettysburg and do avideo with y'all.
Speaker 4 (38:45):
Okay, there you go.
Speaker 1 (38:46):
And we'll put it on that one.
I'm going to give you a fewmonths to get your horses going.
Speaker 3 (38:53):
It shouldn't take that long those are good horses.
They've got a shift to worknext month, so they better hurry
up.
Speaker 1 (39:00):
We bought a pair of three-year-olds, though.
Speaker 4 (39:02):
Oh yeah, that's what we wanted.
But, a lot of people don'trealize.
Most of these carriagecompanies in the world are using
20-plus.
That's right.
When we try to retire, about 20years old is when our horses go
to relax.
Speaker 1 (39:18):
I mean, obviously it depends on each horse, but if
they're doing, healthy and allthat they get to retire and go
home by then.
Most of these carriagecompanies want a retired
deadhead to drive on carriagethough, because they're so laid
back, you know.
Speaker 2 (39:28):
Yeah, we want something with some spirit.
We want animals with somespirit, just because it just
feels confident to have animalsthat are confident with every
step they take.
There are some hills inGettysburg heard of little round
top, maybe that was kind offamous from the movie with the
20th main.
But we do the irish brigade,the irish hill things like that
where you need a little bit ofoomph behind them.
(39:49):
And even in the town, yeah, inthe town of gaysburg, there's
some hills there too who'srunning this while you're gone?
Speaker 1 (39:55):
is anything going on?
Speaker 2 (39:56):
you just took a vacation it's bike week,
motorcycle bike week, andthere's thousands of motorcycles
, and not the horses aren'tafraid of the motorcycles, it's
just the drone of the sound.
You can't communicate and talkwith each other.
So we realize it's not a goodproduct for the tour for the guy
to be able to talk andcommunicate, and it's a good
break right in the middle of ourprime season to go ahead and
(40:17):
let the horses have a break.
We have a break to go get someother stuff done and then we
come back fresh on Mondaymorning.
Speaker 1 (40:22):
So it really worked out good.
Speaker 4 (40:24):
Yeah, that's why, when Jamie first came in contact
with you, it's like, hey, thisis when we're going to be there
and this is when we're leaving.
There's no window for us to beat Altower, yeah.
Speaker 1 (40:33):
I see, yeah Well.
Speaker 4 (40:35):
I wondered about, worked out great, and that's
another thing we just reallyappreciate of you and henry.
Let us come down here and, asyou know, buying horses yourself
, being able to see them anddrive them or be in person with
them, you really get to beunderstanding what you're
getting in and made it nice andwell yeah, and I don't know if
steven has mentioned this, butwe actually put a deposit down
(40:57):
on a different team.
Speaker 3 (40:58):
we were excited to come down and meet and as soon
as we held the lines on the teamthat we bought, we knew, I mean
, that was the team we weregoing home with.
So there's so many good animalshere and so many good teams,
but the best way to do it is tocome here, drive them, take your
time and these guys will answerall your questions.
We had a wonderful experiencewith y'all.
Speaker 4 (41:20):
We drove three teams ourselves and, I think, the
group of people over here fromSan Diego.
They drove eight, ten teams.
Speaker 1 (41:28):
A lot of teams.
Speaker 4 (41:29):
Yeah, because they drove the Halflingers too.
I think that one was just forfun, they drove the Halflingers
around.
I think they're still going tobuy them.
Speaker 1 (41:35):
Oh hey, good for you, he's coming.
Those people are cool peopletoo.
Shout out to Happy Trails,Ponyland, San Diego, California.
We got along super good withthem.
We was going to ship the horsesto them, you know Well, he flew
home.
He called me last night.
He's driving here to get them.
He's coming back Bringing hisfreight liner and his trailer.
(41:56):
We're going to load him up.
I'm going to try to sell him awhole load when he gets back if
you got empty space, you mightas well fill it up.
I'm actually gonna do.
I'm gonna make him do a podcast.
He don't know it yet, but ifyou listen to this, you're gonna
do a podcast with me when youget here.
So shout out to you and I thankyou all so much.
We appreciate all of ourcustomers, all of them.
Speaker 2 (42:17):
One thing steven didn't tell us before we came
down is that they have Airbnbsavailable right here in Casey
County, Kentucky.
That makes it so much easierthan having to drive from
Danville down or some other townthat's all crowded with all
kinds of events.
It would have been nice to beout here in the country and be
able to relax and enjoy thebeautiful knobs of Kentucky.
Speaker 4 (42:36):
You can get more time to spend with your horses that
you buy you all.
Speaker 1 (42:42):
if you're coming in October, you need to reserve our
new Airbnb right across theroad here.
Speaker 4 (42:45):
Okay.
Speaker 1 (42:46):
Get it booked up, unless you want to stay in your
trailer and bring a team orsomething.
Speaker 4 (42:50):
Oh, there you go.
No, I already dumped it in thetrailer as it is.
Speaker 1 (42:59):
But yeah, you need.
Well, we got a bed on thepicture yeah, okay good, you
just have to turn side yeah,diagonal or hang your feet off
the end.
Yeah, you know, I sleep with myfeet off the end of the bed.
I'm not even that tall what doyou have?
two feet in front of you on thetop of the bed I don't know why,
when, ever since I've beenlittle, I always scoot down in
the bed and hang my feet off andmy legs from about right below
(43:21):
my knee down.
I love my feet and legs hangingoff the bed.
I always slept that way.
Speaker 4 (43:25):
Hey, you know what works.
Speaker 1 (43:26):
So you're probably pretty used to it.
Speaker 4 (43:28):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, light diagonal or something like
that.
Speaker 1 (43:32):
Yeah.
For different reasons, but it'sin common Guys, we're going to
wrap this thing up.
It's been a good Sunday morningand we appreciate y'all.
We appreciate you and this hasbeen fun.
And if you're in Gettysburg, gosee these folks Also like their
Facebook Horse Tours ofGettysburg.
Speaker 4 (43:51):
Victorian Carriage.
Yes, sir, is that two differentFacebooks?
Yeah, we actually have threedifferent Facebooks Because we
have the Trail Company asConfederate Trails of Gettysburg
and then the carriage companyas Victorian Carriage Company,
and then Horse Tours ofGettysburg is our main one.
That highlights all the stuffwe do with car tours, walking
tours and stuff like that,because Horse Tours is our big
company.
Speaker 1 (44:11):
You have three different avenues here.
Yes, sir, so if, you want to golike all three, you can.
I'm going to put all three inthe description on this podcast
Also.
I'm going to put all three inthe description on this podcast
Also.
I'm going to put a contactnumber.
Phone number.
Call these guys.
They called a book, a tour.
Is that how that works?
Speaker 4 (44:28):
They can call the book if they would like, but
their online website can walkthem through the whole process
as well.
Perfect Stuff like that.
Speaker 1 (44:35):
We're going to put the website on, we're also going
to tag that YouTube channel andI'm going to issue a challenge
to Spencer and Jamie yourchallenge is issued.
Speaker 4 (44:45):
What's the challenge?
What's our goal?
Speaker 1 (44:47):
A thousand subscribers by October 1st.
Speaker 4 (44:52):
Whoa.
Speaker 1 (44:53):
Okay, you can do it.
You can do it, we'll try.
I know you can yeah okay.
I know you can, and if you needsomebody to make you a
thumbnail or you know, help youdo something, I know somebody
that might be able to do that.
Speaker 4 (45:05):
That'd be awesome.
And question if we reach thatgoal, do we get a free team?
There?
We go Uh-oh, or get a coupon,discount Coupon.
Speaker 2 (45:14):
You got a coupon here , not a free team.
Okay, we'd.
Speaker 4 (45:18):
We'll get a free lunch.
We'll get a free set of harness.
Speaker 1 (45:20):
Oh, a free set of harness.
That works too.
No, you make a YouTube.
You get your YouTube going.
You get 1,000 subscribers byOctober.
I'm going to give you all hastejackets.
Speaker 4 (45:32):
Oh okay, you sure you can make one big enough for me.
Oh yeah, I'm 5XLT.
Speaker 1 (45:38):
Some company makes them.
Okay, I'm 5XLT.
Speaker 3 (45:41):
Some company makes them.
Speaker 4 (45:41):
Oh, yeah, yeah there you go, You're a 5X, 5XLT.
Yeah, it's just shoulders andthe LT that Tall I can fit into
like a 3X, but then it's all acrop top and no one wants to see
that.
Where do you buy your clothes?
Dxl, it's expensive.
Speaker 3 (45:56):
I'm a tent maker, yeah maker.
Speaker 4 (46:03):
Yeah, the amish have a harness shop just for me
actually, but big and tall store.
Yeah, yes, sir, same thing withmy boots.
Speaker 2 (46:05):
It takes like what size are those?
Speaker 4 (46:06):
there's 18, three wide.
So, yeah, they take a while andthey're expensive.
That's why it's like are y'allhearing this?
we got a guy in front of us forthe 18 shoe when I order them,
they I'll run them until they'redone, because they're too
expensive, not to, you know,they probably are.
Yeah, they're carol.
Until they're done becausethey're too expensive.
Not to, they probably are.
Yeah, they're Carolinas.
They're the only boot that Idon't wear cowboy boots at all,
or anything like that becausethey're too narrow, they don't
(46:28):
fit.
Same thing with cowboy hats.
I would love a cowboy hat.
They don't make a big enoughfor my head.
Speaker 1 (46:32):
Oh yeah.
Speaker 4 (46:33):
Fuck it.
Speaker 1 (46:42):
Either they don't fit or it's all over my face and
drowning me.
So american hat company inbowie texas shout out to y'all,
I would love a podcastsponsorship maybe
Speaker 3 (46:49):
possibly I wear american hats every day.
Speaker 1 (46:51):
I'm holding one now in my hand.
I have them hanging all aroundthis room.
We need a sponsorship.
No, I'm joking, I don't want nosponsorship, but american hat
Hat Company.
If you call them, they'll makeyou one.
Oh, okay, if you've got thesize.
Speaker 4 (47:06):
Wow Big, real big.
Speaker 1 (47:08):
Too big.
That's the official size.
Speaker 4 (47:11):
Official size too big squared.
Speaker 1 (47:14):
Guys, thank you for doing this, taking the time this
morning.
I know you've got a long driveahead of you, Yep yep Thanks
With your new team heading outof here.
Speaker 2 (47:21):
Before it gets too hot.
Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1 (47:24):
Well, I think you're going to have a rainy, cool day.
It'll be nice, so it's going tobe a good day to do it.
Speaker 4 (47:29):
We're going to stop at Bucky's on the way in, take
the horses out, get a picture.
It'll be so good I know, we'relooking forward to it.
Speaker 3 (47:37):
One thing about us.
If you didn't learn anythingfrom this podcast, is that we
love Buc-ee's.
Okay, you can take that to thebank.
Speaker 1 (47:46):
What about the brisket sandwich at Buc-ee's?
I've never been.
They're pretty good.
You've never been.
Speaker 4 (47:52):
No, We've only been.
Jamie and I went down to visither mom last winter in Georgia,
and that was the only time.
There's not one close toPennsylvania at all the closest
one they just built.
Speaker 3 (47:59):
Three or four hours away, yeah three or four hours
away.
Speaker 4 (48:03):
So we stopped at one time when we went down to visit
her mom in Georgia, and thenafter that first stop, we were
there four more times before weleft.
So dad's never been there.
So we're going to stop thereand make sure.
And, like I said, it's funny,up where we are, everyone wants
a Buc-ee's, so if you get to go,it's like a celebrity you could
be like oh, look, there's thebeaver, you know, so Are you
going to get your picture madeby the beaver?
(48:24):
Oh yeah, I already have you guys.
Show them the one picture whenwe get done.
Speaker 1 (48:28):
You're taller than the beaver Way taller.
Speaker 4 (48:37):
Oh yeah, I don't know .
If the let's get that close, gohome.
Speaker 1 (48:40):
It would be some good advertisement it would, oh yeah
yeah, that would be kind ofcool.
Thank you for having us.
Speaker 3 (48:46):
You had a great time and we're already looking
forward to buying another team.
Speaker 1 (48:49):
Yeah I appreciate y'all, and if we can help
anybody out there else too, youknow we sell horses every day,
so you can check out our websiteat
wwwdrafthorsesandmulesforsalecom.
Also follow us on Facebook,twitter, tiktok, instagram.
The whole nine yards, and mywife does a stellar job running
(49:10):
all that social media.
Shout out to you, elizabeth,thank you, I appreciate it, and
a shout out to Henry and hisfamily for helping make all this
possible too, and thank you.
Speaker 3 (49:21):
Thank you, Steve Horse.
Speaker 4 (49:21):
Tours of Gettysburg.
Speaker 1 (49:23):
Yeah, and be sure to follow their social media.
And everybody stay tuned forSpencer and his big YouTube
channel.
That's going to happen.
And we're going to support him.
Go ahead and go to Horse Toursof Gettysburg on YouTube now.
Click that subscribe andcomment on one of his older
videos that you've seen him orheard of him on Harness Up
Podcast.
Thank you all.
God bless.
(49:43):
You have a wonderful Sunday.
Go to your church, we're goingto go to ours and we'll see you
soon.
Good morning folks.
Stephen Haste here with HarnessUp Podcast with Haste, draft
Horses and Mules Boy.
We're getting a lot of podcastshere.
Recently I had a lot of peopleshow up and I got a lot of
opportunities.
So we're going to do somepodcasts and here today I'm real
excited about this one.
Guys, we got some folks here Isold a team to here this week
and they run a business up inGettysburg Pennsylvania, a horse
(00:21):
tour business, and we're goingto dig in with these folks, see
how this business got startedand just kind of learn a little
bit about the carriage businessin Gettysburg Pennsylvania.
So who do we have with us?
I want to talk to all y'all.
We're going to tell everybodywho each one of y'all are.
We actually got three people,so bear with us, guys.
We're going to have to pass themic.
Speaker 2 (00:40):
Hey, good morning everybody.
My name is Doug Stevens.
I own Horse Tours of Gaysburg.
I'm here with my son, spencer,and our executive director of
Horseback Riding, jamie.
Well, that's a big title.
Speaker 3 (00:54):
You know what he just made that up?
Speaker 4 (00:56):
That's a good title Hi, I'm Spencer.
I'm the manager of theVictorian Carriage Company,
which is also under Horse Toursof Gaysburg.
Speaker 3 (01:06):
And I'm Jamie.
Apparently, I'm the executivedirector of Horseback Riding and
I just got a promotion, sothat's great.
Speaker 1 (01:11):
Now let's dig a little deeper.
You are, yeah, I'm Doug's son.
You're Doug's son.
Speaker 4 (01:17):
His youngest son.
Speaker 1 (01:19):
And Jamie is your.
Speaker 4 (01:20):
My girlfriend soon to be wife, hopefully.
Speaker 1 (01:23):
Uh-oh, no proposals.
Speaker 4 (01:27):
That's the plan.
That's the plan no proposals onthe podcast.
Speaker 3 (01:31):
Let the podcast, know that there's not a ring on the
finger.
Speaker 4 (01:33):
yet it's the plan.
To be clear, the plan.
Speaker 1 (01:36):
Tell the story how y'all met.
You told me that story and it'sa cool story.
Speaker 3 (01:41):
It's my favorite one to tell, so I'll take the mic
for that.
And that is a.
It's a cool story, it's myfavorite one to tell, so I'll
take the mic for that.
So I had just saw a sponsoredFacebook ad for their company
because we hire well, they hireseasonal employees for every
season, of course and so it wasthree hours away from where I
was currently living and I saidyou know, I want to get back
into horses.
I don't know how to drive acarriage.
It'd be a new skill to learn.
I'm just going to shoot my shotand apply.
(02:06):
So I did, and I drove threehours down to interview and I
parked the car and I got out andSpencer was walking up the hill
and Spencer's six foot 11.
So I get out of my car and Ilook up and up and up and up,
and I said, oh, you're just atiny little thing, aren't you?
And he hit me with this big oldsmile and that was it.
We were pretty much inseparablefrom that day on.
(02:26):
We do co-drivers for eachcarriage shift, so you'll have a
lead driver and then,especially when someone like me
who had no experience comes on,you're there to take the lines
if something happens, or to jumpdown and help a guest or head
the horses or anything like that.
So there's always two driversthere for safety.
So every shift, if I couldswitch my shifts around to be
(02:48):
spencer's co-driver, I was doingit, man, anything to just get
some alone time with him.
And that's how it was.
We just became really goodfriends and you know, yeah, now
I'm a better driver than him.
Is what he meant to say?
Yeah, yep, now he's theco-driver and I'm the lead
driver spencer, you're 611.
Speaker 1 (03:06):
Yes, in case of county, here there's not many,
there's nobody.
611.
When you got out that day, Idon't think henry ever saw
anybody as tall as you in personI thought he looked scared of
me.
Speaker 4 (03:17):
I didn't know for sure.
Speaker 1 (03:18):
I was trying to be friendly and he said that's the
tallest man I've ever seen.
I said he's tall, but you knowit put a perspective to me.
I watch basketball all the time, nba basketball and I'm like
6'11".
You hear that all the time.
You'd be short compared to someof those guys.
Speaker 4 (03:37):
Yeah, those guys are like 7'4" some of them and
Henry's little kids.
Speaker 1 (03:46):
they come in.
They ask me, they say he istall.
I thought that was funny.
So how long have you beendriving horses, Spencer?
Speaker 4 (03:53):
Since I was eight years old.
Eight years old is when we, thewhole family well, when I was
eight, the whole family decidedto learn how to drive carriages
because of dad and everything.
The company the horsebackcompany started first where we
started taking people aroundtours of the battlefield and
stuff like that.
And then dad got hurt on hislast deployment and overseas and
stuff.
But he still wanted to beinteracting with the horses and
(04:14):
all that type of stuff becausehorses are very therapeutic.
But he wasn't able to ride atthe time.
Now he is, thankfully.
But so he's like okay, let's allgo learn how to drive a
carriage.
So we went down and startedlearning and I really took to it
when I was eight because I,being 6'11" quickly I grew
horses that I could ride but Icould sit on a carriage with any
(04:34):
horses and that just becamekind of my passion in driving
horses.
It was really fun and I learnedhow to drive a horse before a
car.
And I mean, I know you knowthat, but up in pennsylvania
that isn't a thing anymorebesides the amish community it's
not and now I'm able to teachthat to 30 new employees every
year.
It's kind of really cool thatit's not a dying school anymore,
(04:56):
you know let's take a moment tothank dad here for his service.
Speaker 1 (05:00):
We love our veterans here.
Thank you for your service.
Speaker 2 (05:02):
We appreciate you.
You, you're welcome, thank you.
Speaker 1 (05:04):
What was you in?
Tell the folks what branch.
Speaker 2 (05:08):
I started out in the Army and I went into the Air
Force.
I was a combat medic in theArmy and became a helicopter
medic and then went to fixedwing.
I ended up doing sixdeployments between Afghanistan
and Iraq and halfway around theworld everywhere else.
So we were busy.
Speaker 1 (05:23):
You're a second veteran in a row, our halfway
around the world, everywhereelse, so we were busy.
You're a second veteran in arow, our last guy from long
island, new york, was a veteran.
Speaker 2 (05:28):
Oh cool, that's really interesting.
Speaker 1 (05:30):
Yep, so you have.
You been around horses yourwhole life?
Speaker 2 (05:32):
nope, nope, my daughter was about 14 years old
and she got interested in horses.
So we said we only got a coupleyears before she gets her
license.
Well, if we want her to stickaround, we better get our horse
so you started this business?
Speaker 1 (05:45):
in what year?
Officially, our first customerswere 2010 so you've been going
15 years strong.
And then did you start spencerright in with him in 2010,
helping or yeah yes, yeah, thatwas the horseback side.
Speaker 4 (06:01):
I was obviously a lot younger then, but it was only
the five of us family because Igot mom, obviously, and a
brother and sister as well, andwe were the only employees then,
and at the time we lived aboutan hour and a half from
Gettysburg.
So every morning we woke upreally early, like 4 in the
morning, get all the horsesready, load on the trailer,
drive an hour and a half toGettysburg for like a 9 am ride
(06:22):
and then sit there for threerides which are two hours each.
We do an hour break in betweenand then we come all the way
home, get food on the road, gethome at like midnight, go to bed
, wake up the next morning for 4am and do it again.
So after a few years of that,dad and mom got kind of tired of
driving all the time.
So they found a place up thereand we started living up in
gettysburg, which madeeverything a lot easier.
(06:43):
Not that you have to, not thatit isn't hard still, but it's a
lot easier than driving an hourand a half both ways I love the
history of gettysburg.
Speaker 1 (06:50):
I love the.
You know it's got to be a coolplace.
I've never been.
I do have a cousin mitchellshout out to my cousin.
Mitchell, first cousin, movedto gettysburg a few years ago
and I do do need to go see him.
He's been wanting me to, so I'mgoing to come see you all
someday.
Speaker 4 (07:07):
Yeah, you're more than welcome to.
I mean, you've got to come inand check on the team you just
sold us.
Speaker 1 (07:11):
Well, we want to do a YouTube video together.
Speaker 4 (07:14):
Like.
Speaker 1 (07:14):
I'm going to come up there and check on you.
It'd be cool, it'd be awesome.
Speaker 4 (07:27):
I think the folks would like.
It always says gaysburg is asmall town with a global
reputation.
Yeah, oh, I did right.
Uh, but it's, it's a small town.
It's very pretty, very quaintand everything but gaysburg gets
about three to 3.5 millionvisitors every year, so it gets
busy, and it gets busy quick andcome fall time, after like
holiday season starts, it getsback to small town roots real
quick as well.
Speaker 1 (07:43):
But well, I've learned a lot about this kind of
talking to you guys the pastcouple days.
Not only do you do carriagerides at Gettysburg, you do
historic tours.
Speaker 4 (07:52):
Yeah yeah, we have a licensed Baffle Guide on every
one of our tours.
It's a two-hour carriage tourthrough the battlefield.
Speaker 1 (07:59):
So folks that come to you, if you're coming to
Gettysburg, check out this place, Horse Tours of Gettysburg.
Check out this place, HorseTours of Gettysburg.
Tell them kind of what all goeson.
You've got the carriages,You've got the horseback rides.
If they don't want to do that,I heard they can just come take
a car tour too.
Speaker 4 (08:13):
Yeah, we do car tours as well and we also do walking
tours of the town as well.
Any way you can think to goaround the battlefield, you can
do it and try to be as inclusiveas we can, because you've got a
lot of people that like horsesbut are scared to ride, and
that's where the carriages comeinto play.
And you've got some people thatjust don't like horses in
general, which you know.
I don't know why, but if peopledon't you've got a car tour or
(08:34):
you've got the walking tour andstuff that goes through the town
and Gainsborough's kind ofdivided between the town and the
battlefield.
The battlefield is much, it'sjust open land and stuff like
that and very, you know, openand monuments and everything.
It's very beautiful but peoplekind of forget that the battle
happened straight through thetown as well.
Yeah, like the Union Armyretreated straight through town
(08:55):
and you got gun marks and cannonholes and stuff throughout the
whole town itself, which ispretty neat.
Speaker 1 (09:00):
And it was the bloodiest battle in history,
wasn't it?
Speaker 4 (09:02):
No, it's the bloodiest battle in North
America.
Yeah, yeah, it's the bloodiestbattle of the Civil War, and
even A single day was Antietam,yeah a single day was Antietam,
but even let alone, I think July2nd was the third bloodiest day
.
Yeah, but each 34,000casualties.
Yeah, throughout those threedays it was uh, it's kind of
(09:25):
weird we say this all the time.
It was a very destructive anddeadly battle and you know,
horrible place during the time.
But now you go out therebecause it's protected and it's
beautiful.
It's great that this place isprotected, but now you go out
there it's kind of hard toimagine this big battle, this
big war, happening there becauseit's just butterflies,
(09:50):
wildflowers, deer, and it's just, it's very, uh, peaceful.
Speaker 1 (09:51):
Yeah, now we was in here, um, while y'all was out
driving man, your dad was and Iwas just looking at pictures of
gattysburg.
It's gorgeous, the sun setsover that battlefield.
I was showing him.
He said oh yeah, that's it,that's how it looks.
Speaker 3 (10:01):
So the sun rises.
Yeah, next level, what level?
What?
Speaker 1 (10:05):
is how many?
Let's talk about horses.
How many teams are y'allrunning right now?
Like, how many teams do youhave at the carriage barn?
Speaker 4 (10:14):
Well, with the new team, we have nine now.
So, yeah, we have nine teams.
We were not so much on thebreed.
I mean not that I am definitelypartial to gray Peritrons, but
we have gray Peritrons, blackPeritrons, we've had Belgians,
spotted drafts, clydesdales,stuff like that.
I know very much about thetemperament because, like I've
told Steven, we deal a lot withtraffic, with rangers, lights on
(10:37):
double-decker buses, rvs.
We're going past cars all thetime.
Cannons, cannons yeah, they do.
They do Living history thatthey shoot cannons on the
battlefield all the time to makepeople see, or have people see,
what cannon was like.
The horses learn how to dealwith cannons as well and
gunshots and stuff.
Speaker 1 (10:54):
When they do a reenactment.
Are you running tours?
Speaker 4 (10:59):
Yes, but they don't do reenactments on the
battlefield.
They do the living history,where they shoot one or two cans
at a time, but full-on fightingwhere they're shooting at each
other, that isn't allowed tohappen on the battlefield.
So that's about three milesaway, really.
Speaker 1 (11:10):
Why is that?
Speaker 4 (11:11):
Because it's supposed to.
Speaker 2 (11:13):
They believe that there's thousands of bodies
still on the battlefieldunmarked and so anywhere you
walk could possibly actually bean unmarked grave because they
buried them where they fell.
For the most part, I mean, theymade maps but not all the maps
were actually accurate and theydid try to recover them Years
after the battle.
(11:33):
They recovered a lot ofconfidants and took them down to
Richmond to the HollywoodCemetery.
There's a big segment of folksthat were killed in Gettysburg
down there.
But even I think it was 1996 itwas one of the most recent
bodies.
They were able to findsomeone's walking along and saw
a bone sticking out of the sideof the hill by the railroad cut
(11:54):
and they determined it was aconfederate soldier.
And a few years ago there was aboy scout walking along the
trail that actually we use onthe horseback and he found a
bullet laying there.
So it's very close to thesurface still.
Even a lot, a lot of the trees.
They're what we call witnesstrees.
They were here at the time ofthe battle.
If a branch gets broken becauseof a storm and the park service
comes to cut them up, quiteoften their chainsaws will hit.
(12:16):
Bullets are stuck in it from100 and uh was 153 years ago or
whatever it was.
Yeah, 162.
Yeah, 162 years ago.
Speaker 4 (12:23):
They said there was like 17 million bullets were
fired.
Speaker 2 (12:26):
Yeah enough to fill a tri-axle dump truck.
Speaker 1 (12:29):
It's really amazing and if you sit and think about
it, so you like living historyevery day.
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (12:35):
We are very privileged to be the if you want
to say the present-daycaretakers of the park and of
the history, and able to shareit to people all around the
world.
And with us, on the horsebackor carriage, we go at the speed
of history.
We go at the time that theydeveloped the park.
The wayside markers along theroad are actually angled to be
viewed from a carriage, not froma car.
(12:56):
That's the time.
Speaker 1 (13:00):
It has to mean something to you, though, being
a military veteran and owningthis business in Gettysburg.
Speaker 2 (13:06):
Yes, yes, gettysburg has a huge veteran community and
the people that come, we callthem our guests or our customer.
They're very big on priorservice.
I mean everybody comes therebecause it's very interesting to
see, as a veteran, abattlefield that at one time was
hell on earth, literally forpeople and their suffering.
(13:29):
But because of the struggles itunited a country and united a
people from both the north andthe south, and to this day you
can go there and see the calmand the peace that has happened
because of that struggle andbecause of the people's
sacrifices.
Speaker 4 (13:44):
The military still uses it for trading, calm and
the peace.
Speaker 2 (13:46):
that has happened because of that struggle and
because of the people'ssacrifices.
Quite often carnal barracks iswhere they teach people to get
ready to become generals andthey come down quite often.
That's not too far away and wehave west point comes down all
the time.
They do a battlefield tours andwe do staff rides, also on the
horseback, where the group ofthe staff officers of a command
(14:06):
will come out and we talk aboutthe battle and strategic
uniqueness, about the battle,about command and making your
enemy react to you.
You know all this kind ofstrategy.
In fact, it was originallydeveloped with five towers.
They could climb up and be ableto see the battlefield from a
distance.
Now we only have two and a half, but it's been used for over a
(14:26):
hundred years as a learning tool.
Speaker 1 (14:29):
My cousin that moved there to Gettysburg, his son,
which is my second cousin.
He's a military nut.
Like historian, he's a genius,I'll go ahead and say it he is.
Anyway, he's a genius and heloved reenactments.
He got into it up there atGaisburg doing reenactments and
he also come down here to MillSprings.
(14:50):
There's Mill SpringsBattlefield just like 20 miles
from here.
Speaker 4 (14:54):
We're familiar with.
Speaker 2 (14:55):
Perryville.
Speaker 1 (14:56):
Yeah, I know Perryville was a big battle.
Well, the Battle of MillSprings is just 20 miles behind
that window from you and it's aZollicoffer, general Zollicoffer
.
You have to check it out.
But yeah, you got the Battle ofPerryville.
You all stayed in Perryvillewhile you was here.
Speaker 4 (15:12):
Yeah, we got a family in Perryville.
Speaker 1 (15:13):
A lot of history.
It's crazy really.
So let's get back on horses.
We can talk about this historicstuff a lot.
I enjoy it.
But you got nine teams.
How many carried?
Do you run more than onecarriage at once, or how?
What's your daily?
What's your daily routine withrides?
Speaker 4 (15:29):
I guess I'm saying so it depends on the day, but
weekdays we have two carriagesgoing out.
Right now we're hoping to getup to four carriages at a time.
We just need more horses again,hence why we're here buying
from haste.
But we have two carriages thatgo out for two tours two hours
each a day, so we have fourcarriage rides going out, and
it's 10 people per each ride, sowe take 40 people a day.
(15:51):
Come saturday and sundays,though, we have three carriages
going out, two rides each, so wehave six rides going out, six
two hours each, so we can have60 people out a day.
Speaker 1 (16:00):
So I'm trying to picture this in my mind.
I've not been there yet, butI'm going.
Do you have a barn close to thebattlefield where you do tours,
or how does this work?
Or do you haul in steel or whatso?
Speaker 4 (16:13):
yeah, we have a property right outside the
national park limits.
It's actually still battlefieldbecause the national park
doesn't own the wholebattlefield it was so there was
a.
The farm that we actually rentand operate out of was part of
the South Cavalry battlefield,so it's kind of neat that where
our horses stay now there's anactual cavalry fight there now.
Yeah, and on one of the ridgesright above the property there's
(16:34):
actually still cannons.
The park owns a little slitherof land with cannons that
overlook the horses.
So it's like we're keeping thehorses in check.
You know, threaten them withcannon fire, yeah.
But our guests show up to ourproperty down there on
Emmitsburg Road that's where thecarriages leave from and they
park there.
We hop on the carriage.
We have a barn, we take thecarriages straight out of them,
(16:56):
hook the horses up.
Speaker 3 (16:57):
We harness and hitch.
Speaker 4 (16:59):
Oh yeah.
Yeah, that's fair too.
We get the horses from our homefield slash farm north of town.
We get them dressed andharnessed and put them in a
trailer, take them down to thebarn down there, because the
property that we leave out of iswhere our trail horses stay,
because it has a nice corral andstuff.
So we catch the trail horsesthere and then we trailer the
trail horses out to thebattlefield as well.
Speaker 1 (17:20):
Wow.
So how close is your house tothe barn?
Speaker 4 (17:24):
About 10 minutes, 10 minutes, 15 minutes you drive up
to the barn every day yeah,it's uh, the one is on the south
side of the town, the one's onthe north side of town, so it's
you just gotta cross town, butnot too bad I gotta get up there
and see all this now.
Speaker 1 (17:36):
Y'all are making me interested.
Speaker 2 (17:37):
Yeah, these are some of our horses actually spend the
whole summer on the battlefielditself.
Speaker 4 (17:41):
Yeah, yeah, the talking about the battlefield
before the park rents a lot ofproperties out for horses,
pastures or farming, and talkingabout how close the battlefield
is to everyone.
The park has strict rules abouthow they can farm the fields,
Like they can't go down deep andtell it up because there's
still active artillery shellsand stuff out there, so they
have to be very careful whenthey farm.
Speaker 1 (18:02):
Let's talk about the horseback riding now with miss
jamie well, good thing I'm theexecutive director of that.
Speaker 3 (18:08):
That's right, you are how many?
Speaker 1 (18:11):
let's talk about your trail, right.
How many riding horses arey'all using right now on the
string or whatever you want tocall it?
Speaker 3 (18:16):
we have about 31 so we can rotate.
We take 19 out for a full dayand then within that 19 we
rotate, so everyone can get aday off.
Most of them only work abouttwo days a week.
Speaker 1 (18:30):
So how long do you have different lengths of rides,
or how does that work?
Speaker 3 (18:33):
It's the same as the carriage where we do three.
They're all two-hour rides.
We do three of them out athorseback, yeah, so we start our
day a little earlier thancarriages.
It's much harder work.
If you're asking me, we reportat that barn where we rent, the
one that Spencer was justtalking to.
We keep all of our trail horsesthere.
So the crew shows up in themorning, we dump grain in the
(18:55):
corral, we bring all 31 horsesin.
We have a list of the 19 thatare going out that morning.
So they all wear biothanehalters with a tag on them with
their name.
So you grab the 19 halters ofthe horses that are going out
that day.
When they're in there eatingtheir grain, you halter them all
up.
We load up two differenttrailers.
We have a trailer that hauls 11and one that hauls eight, so
(19:17):
that's our 19.
We load them up and we go outto a campground on the
battlefield which is kind of ourbase of operation for the day.
We unload there, groom tack andthen that's where our guests
would come and meet us.
We do the three tours untack,load up, go home.
It's a long day, a lot of work.
You get really buff and reallytan by the end of the summer.
Speaker 1 (19:39):
I would say so.
So you've been doing it withthem how long?
Now?
Two years.
Speaker 3 (19:42):
Yes, sir, yep.
Speaker 1 (19:44):
Wow, how.
Speaker 3 (19:49):
Yeah, we try to cross-train because a lot of
people, a lot of our applicants,come for horseback, because
everyone loves to ride a horse.
Speaker 1 (19:55):
Okay, yeah.
Speaker 3 (19:55):
And no one really has driving experience.
So we do kind of like to getour hooks into them and teach
them how to drive so everyonecan do everything.
If you know a shift needsfilled or something like that,
you have a couple that, oh no,no, I just like to stay on
horseback or no.
I can only do carriage.
But pretty much all 30employees are pretty
interchangeable.
Speaker 1 (20:12):
What type of horses are you using for these
horseback rides?
Speaker 3 (20:16):
It's a mix Lots of just randoms, a lot of quarter
horses, some of the retiredcarriage horses.
We take kind of a mix of lightsall the way to heavies and we
got just little crosses, lightriding horses.
We have one that's like a weirdstandard bred cross thing.
We got some paints, we gotquarters.
(20:36):
We go all the way to Belgians.
Yeah, we can't do gated, nothoroughbreds because they're
too fast for our pace.
Speaker 1 (20:45):
Yeah, percheron crosses, just kind of whatever
If it's a good size and a goodmind, we can find a spot for it
for sure.
Speaker 3 (20:52):
Yeah, it's all temperament.
So if they have the righttemperament to go out there,
then we don't really care muchabout breed.
Speaker 1 (20:59):
When me and Henry first started together actually
doing this was in 2022.
He came on board with me fulltime and then in 2023, we sold
some teams and I went out toMeadview lake, arizona, to the
grand canyon, to grand canyonwest ranch, and I sold them a
(21:21):
team of belgians to do theirthing with.
They do a sunset tour to go ontop in the desert, on top of big
mountain and watch the sunsetand this guy named cowboy dave
plays guitar and sings up therethat's cool, it's pretty awesome
.
But they had a trail ridingbusiness there and I stayed
there three days in a littlecabin right behind where they
(21:42):
did the trail rides and it blewmy mind.
They got a step that putseverybody on.
They get on and they tie thereins in like a knot like a
stick and you hold on to thislittle stick and they tell you
you either go this way or thisway or this way to stop.
(22:03):
And that's how everybody ridesone hand like this.
How do you go about that?
I mean, I know you got you gota lot of new riders all the time
.
I mean, do you give themdirections?
Speaker 3 (22:19):
Yeah, and they don't listen.
But we try.
We try to set them up to besafe out there.
Yeah, that is the mostchallenging part, and the main
function of our job as outridersor wranglers or whatever you
want to call them, is to keep aneye on the guests and be safety
conscious, because more oftenthan not, each ride you're
dealing with 15 people who havenever been on a horse before.
So before we give them theirhorse assignments, we jump on a
(22:44):
horse and we do what we call asafety briefing or a demo.
We grab a horse, we mount up, wesay, hey, this is your reins,
this is how you steer, stop,keep your heels down, kind of
try to go over the basics.
A lot of the times what we'vebeen having recently is people
are not used to being in thesaddle for two hours and they're
definitely dehydrated.
So we really try to drive homethe point like, hey, sit upright
in your saddle, because you getthe kind of sack of taters off
(23:05):
to one side and then people justride two hours crooked and
don't know any better.
I guess, yeah, but yeah, we getthem on with the mounting block
.
We get them off with themounting block and we try to
hold their hand through thewhole process.
But I mean, horses are liveanimals with minds of their own,
so all we can do is try to givethem the tools and the skills
(23:27):
to have a good, fun, safe rideout there.
But there is a portion where,okay, here you go.
You know, you've got to kind oftrust them to listen to you and
follow your direction.
I just had a day you had a kidthat just said I don't want to
control the horse.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
He threw his reins over hishorn and said I don't want to
control her, and so she was inthe grass every four seconds.
(23:47):
So, yeah, I clipped the leadrope to her and ponied her off
my horse.
But people do try and, andevery now and then you get rides
where people oh, yeah, I'veridden, yep, I'm, I have horse
experience and those rides aregreat because it's like oh great
, I don't need to babysit anyone, everyone knows what they're
doing.
Speaker 2 (24:01):
So I could see from what you do, though you learn
every day oh, absolutely youlearn something, and it's always
something new yeah, I like thatdefinitely not something not to
do, that's that's true, we'retrying to mix the history into
the tour that they're having fun, they're learning, don't even
(24:22):
realize it, they're.
They're out there on the actualtrails that are documented
through photographic evidencethat these were where general
lee was or general longstreetwas, and the guide who does this
study and the testingapparently it's harder than the
bar test to become a lawyer iswhat we've been told many times.
But they gather and theyportray the story in such a way
(24:42):
that people will turn around tolook behind them to see if
General Pickett is riding up,galloping up to talk to General
Longstreet, because they are sopassionate about how they speak
and how they can draw you intothe history now.
So that's really really goodand really interesting.
That's why we love it.
We don't want someone to comeup and just give a canned speech
that this happened here, thathappened there.
(25:04):
No, tell us what they were like, tell us who they were doing,
tell them where they werethinking, what was going on
around them as we ride, becauseyou're on the exact ground, you
can see what they could see.
We ride on the military crestand you have to explain to
people what that is and how youcan ride and be close to the
action but not be seen becausethere's only line of sight.
At that time most cans wereabout two to three mile range.
(25:24):
So you need to be away fromthat kind of stuff.
But getting back to the horsesthat we use, we want the horses
to be fit.
They're like athletes becausewe do six hours a day.
You can't just take any horseand put them out there and do
six hours.
When we first started, thegravel they use is called antiem
base.
We would literally wear ourhorseshoes that there was
nothing in the front, it was thesteel just gone.
(25:45):
But we also prepare the horsesand what we feed them.
We give them high fat so youcan have the energy to be out
there, but not hot food to makethem hot and excitable.
We want them to be nice andcalm so that way people aren't
afraid to be out there andriding.
That's a huge thing.
You build it for the personthat's not experienced, so they
can be out there and be verycomfortable.
When we first started we didn'tknow what was going to happen
(26:06):
with the business, but the storythat my wife and I learned was
a woman came out.
I forget exact details.
It was three or four children.
She had a king with her, itsays to be blunt cancer sucks.
She was dying from cancer andshe was doing her bucket list
with her kids.
Her kids were like between 12and 15, probably a couple girls,
(26:30):
a couple boys.
They hated the world.
They hated the world becausetheir mom's dying.
They knew their mother wasdying.
They just hated the world.
We tried to get them into goinginto the ride.
Hey, are you excited?
They're non-off-lack.
They just didn't care.
By the time we got back, theywere singing on top of spaghetti
and they were showing us theirkarate moves.
They were having such a goodtime.
(26:52):
We knew their karate moves.
They're having such a good time.
This is we knew for a fact thatthey were going to remember
this for the rest of their lives, no matter how long their mom
lived and we knew didn't matter.
Whatever happened from thatpoint forward with their
business, we felt successfulbecause we're able to make a
difference in people's lives.
you know we're living outside.
You know so many people areused to just now playing video
games and people don't talk toeach other anymore, they text.
(27:15):
So getting out there andtalking to people face-to-face
and asking them about themselvesand you know a lot of people
have connections.
Quite often we have people thatgreat-great-grandfather fought
here or something like that.
It's really really interestingto hear their stories.
So that makes it interestingfor me too.
Speaker 1 (27:31):
Yeah, you brought up a good point there.
People don't talk anymore, theytext.
You know I text a lot of people.
I do.
I have to with this business.
But I've got on our websitecall, Call me.
I would rather somebody pick upthat phone and call me and
(27:53):
around here we don't see that.
You know I'm with yeah, I'm notMennonite or Amish, I'm with
them every day.
My wife's not Mennonite orAmish.
Me and her text throughout theday.
But you know, all of mycontacts in this community that
I'm with are Mennonite and Amishand me and Henry can't text
each other.
We never have, we don't.
(28:13):
He's Mennonite, he don't have acell phone we call.
The other night we did aconference for our horse sale
we're having and there's fiveboard members.
I called them all into thephone on a six-way call, added
(28:38):
everybody and we had a two-hourconversation.
You know, when the youth getstogether here in this community
the mennonites and stuff theymeet all together.
There's a lot of face-to-faceinteraction.
Did you know that is the reasonbehind a lot of the mennonites
and amish not owning a phone?
Because it takes away, takesaway face-to-face communication
with people.
(28:59):
That's the reason, and you know,when you want to see somebody
and have a meeting with them,you want the Mennonites and
Amish, they want you to have togo to them, because that's the
true way to meet somebody talkto them and get the point across
.
And that's a good point.
I like that.
That's yeah, it's the world's.
Speaker 2 (29:17):
Went to texting like crazy and they don't have the
personnel they don't have.
They really don't have theskills.
They don't know how to readsomebody when you're talking to
them.
Are they receiving what you'retrying to say or are you using
the words that they understandthe point that you're trying to
get across?
It's very difficult, but that'swhat's good about getting
outside.
It's a family, it can be afamily activity, and our
(29:40):
carriages it's like they'rebench seats that face each other
.
It's a group talk.
The guys there are talkingabout stuff that you can
communicate right across theroom, like you and I are right
now, and talk about what'sinteresting to you and what
you're learning about.
It's just personal stories,personal connections.
That's what makes it sointeresting, not just repeating
words or stories you read in abook.
It's the personal individualthat makes it very interesting.
Speaker 4 (30:04):
And that's a skill that I learned I didn't realize
I needed to learn, comparativelyto my group of kids in high
school, especially talking toall these people doing these
tours and stuff, since I was 8years old and you know you don't
realize how many people youtalk to, but it's well into the
thousands, of, tens of thousandsof people I've met and talked
to.
And it's funny because thefirst few years and stuff we're
(30:24):
doing it was more of a weekendtype, company type, stuff like
that.
And I go back to high schooland look and like we were just
talking about all these kids areonly texting all the time and
you go to have a conversationand they look they can talk to
you for like a minute or two andthen they're back on the phone.
It's like so it's.
It's one of the skills thatyou're like wow, you don't know
how to talk to people, you don't.
You don't know how to publicspeaking stuff and not.
That stuff isn't nerve-wrackinglike it can be for anyone, but
(30:47):
there's a point that youunderstand that it's okay, you
can talk.
It's not everyone's going to bemean to you, not everyone's
going to be judging.
You can have a normalconversation and have a great
conversation with someone you'vemet maybe a minute ago, kind of
just like how it was when wegot here with you, stephen.
Speaker 1 (31:01):
Oh yeah, you know I feel I talk to people every day.
So meeting people and meetingcustomers is nothing new to me.
You know I'm used to it.
But there are some customersyou feel like the vibe.
There's a vibe, you know yougot common interest.
Some people's just cool.
Speaker 3 (31:20):
We're vibing yeah.
Speaker 1 (31:21):
And y'all since you walked in here.
You know, since you pulled inin your truck, I felt a vibe.
You know it's cool, we're onthe same page.
It's fun.
We've had a great time.
Speaker 3 (31:33):
We had a good meal thursday we didn't what steven's
not telling y'all is that we'reall wearing matching friendship
bracelets right now, andthey're gorgeous yeah, shout out
to bread of life in liberty.
Kentucky and uh we enjoyed ourmeal.
That catfish I'll be dreamingabout it.
Speaker 1 (31:54):
That's right.
Some people may not realize,guys, we're talking to Spencer
and Jamie here and there.
How old are you, Spencer?
I'm 23.
Speaker 3 (32:05):
And Jamie I'm a cougar.
I'm 32.
Proud of it, I'll own it beforepeople make their own
assumptions.
Speaker 4 (32:14):
If it makes it better at heart, I'm like 48.
Speaker 1 (32:16):
It's true yeah, they're a young couple and
you're turning it over to them.
Speaker 2 (32:22):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (32:23):
Pretty much.
That's what we want they'regoing to run this business.
Do you have anything you wantto mention before we go off this
and anything you got that youwant to tell the folks or
anything Anybody before we gooff this and anything you got
that?
Speaker 4 (32:35):
you want to tell the folks or anything, anybody, feel
free to go ahead and follow.
Follow us on Facebook and stuff.
At Victorian carriage companyhorse stores Gaisberg we're
looking to really expand ouroperations, do a lot of town
rides and stuff like that andhave a brick and mortar building
eventually in town.
So we're looking for it toexpand.
We're looking to post a lotmore videos and stuff like how
Haste does here.
(32:55):
If you're looking to see theteam that we bought for them,
we'll be doing plenty of videosand all that to show off them.
And if you guys are in Gaisburglooking to come out, please
feel free to come and enjoy thetour.
Or if you're looking to drivegarages for us or ride horseback
, we always have open employment.
So open employment like so ifyou yeah, so if you go on our
(33:16):
website and you're interested inthat, we have an application on
there.
Feel free to fill that outfolks, you're hearing this.
Speaker 1 (33:24):
They just offered to open hiring.
You know how many people textme daily.
Are you hiring?
I want to be your apprentice.
Wow, hire me, hire me, hire me.
Folks call spencer gettysburghorse tours.
Speaker 4 (33:41):
There, I haven't you need drivers, I'm sure oh yeah,
the more drivers we get, themore stuff we can do so but
there's a lot of cool people outthere older gentlemen and older
ladies.
Speaker 1 (33:53):
Some of the ladies drive better than the men, amen,
amen.
I've got.
I'm telling you there was alady here from Alberta, canada,
over last weekend, miss Anna upin.
Oh Lord, I can't remember thetown.
Forgive me, anna, if you listento this, but she's like I don't
know how old she was.
(34:13):
She's a retired police officer,one of the coolest ladies I
ever met.
She still does all her own hay.
She's home right now cuttingand baling hay.
She's like I got to get my hayput up before I can meet the
driver at the border with thehorses.
This lady is a go-getter.
Last Sunday morning, of course,we went to church.
(34:34):
She wanted to come here.
She was here over Sunday,didn't have nothing to do.
You know she's in a cabin.
Yeah, I want to drive my horses.
I bought.
So I told her.
I said well, we're going tochurch, I'll meet you at the
barn.
You know.
Show you what to do.
You know.
Show you where the horses are.
Show you what to do.
You know.
Show you where the horses areand you drive them while we're
(34:55):
at church.
Well, I didn't show her nothing.
I showed her where her horseswas.
She grabbed her new horses out,threw the harness on them,
walked them over the tongue outhere and hooked them to her
wagon and off she went.
And it's the ladies like thatthat are tough and you know, if
(35:21):
you could get some ladies likethat driving for you, probably
doing pretty good, yeah, they'remore than welcome, send them
our way.
And like there's a company Iknow down in shout out to dream
carriage in chester, southcarolina, gail and her husband
mike down there super goodpeople.
They've got a wonderfulbusiness they're doing and
they're actually starting inchester.
They just rented a brick andmortar building, they've redone
it all and they're going tostart a horse tour of chester,
(35:42):
south carolina, taking peoplearound the city and talking
about the history, kind of likewhat you're doing.
And yeah, there's so many goodcarriage companies out there and
we sell them all the time andyou all are just a mix in with
them.
So welcome to the community,welcome to our family, and we
hope you come to our barbecue inOctober.
(36:02):
If you can get away, you've gotto come.
Speaker 3 (36:05):
We're going to try.
Yeah, we're definitely going totry.
Speaker 1 (36:10):
So bring as many people as you want with you and
everybody's invited.
All'all out there listening.
We're having a customerappreciation barbecue.
Get together october, oh lord23rd 23rd, 24th 25th.
Thank you, jamie, you're welcomebut, guys, if you're in
gettysburg, if you're going topennsylvania, go visit these
people.
They're super good people andthey deserve your business.
(36:32):
Go help them out, go take aride with them.
They won't let you down.
And they just bought a new teamfrom us.
I don't know if they'rerenaming them or not.
We had some talks about it.
I don't know if they decided ornot.
Did you decide?
Speaker 3 (36:46):
They'll have to watch a video and find out.
Stay tuned.
Speaker 4 (36:49):
No, we have not decided.
Gosh, jamie, that was good.
Speaker 1 (36:53):
That was good.
Yeah, that's some very goodadvertising there.
Guys, encourage Spencer andJamie to start this YouTube
channel.
Speaker 4 (37:02):
We got a channel.
We have like two videos of ourtraining videos on there.
Speaker 1 (37:07):
Okay, we'll tell them the channel.
Speaker 4 (37:08):
Yeah, it's Horse Tours of Gettysburg.
Speaker 3 (37:10):
There's a video of Spencer harnessing up a horse.
You can see just how tall he is.
Speaker 1 (37:18):
He makes that percheron look like a pony.
Go give that a watch andthere'll be more videos posted.
We want to get Spencer andJamie doing videos every week
and get a channel going.
It'll be awesome.
Speaker 4 (37:27):
Yeah, that's a goal in hubs when you've got time.
Speaker 3 (37:31):
Yeah, if these horses would stop needing fed every
day, we'd have the time.
Speaker 1 (37:35):
I'm calling it now on this podcast.
You do it, spencer.
A channel, you get going.
I'm calling it it now.
Speaker 4 (37:47):
it's going to be awesome and it's going to get a
lot of views and a lot ofsubscribers that'll be awesome.
So I definitely want to try thatand that's uh and, as you know,
doing all the marketing herefor haste, that the more and
more you can do, it just bringsmore and more attention to you
and like what we kind of hintedat before, not having people in
the world driving carriages andstuff like this, the more and
more we can get it out there,like the company South Carolina
and stuff, the better it is.
(38:08):
The more it's around, the morethe people see it, the more
we're kind of bringing that backinto the modern day world that
people just are on the phone allthe time.
They don't see the beauty ofall these big, beautiful draft
horses and or riding horses, youknow anything like that.
Speaker 1 (38:21):
Also, not many people see a big giant like Spencer
throwing this harness anddriving these horses.
You'll be a hit, spencer.
You'll be a hit hey.
Speaker 4 (38:29):
I'm Tony.
We got to post that video ofyou and I walking down the
hallway.
I'm going to put it on.
We'll do it.
We're going to put it on there.
Speaker 1 (38:41):
No, we're going to save it, because I'm going to
come to Gettysburg and do avideo with y'all.
Speaker 4 (38:45):
Okay, there you go.
Speaker 1 (38:46):
And we'll put it on that one.
I'm going to give you a fewmonths to get your horses going.
Speaker 3 (38:53):
It shouldn't take that long those are good horses.
They've got a shift to worknext month, so they better hurry
up.
Speaker 1 (39:00):
We bought a pair of three-year-olds, though.
Speaker 4 (39:02):
Oh yeah, that's what we wanted.
But, a lot of people don'trealize.
Most of these carriagecompanies in the world are using
20-plus.
That's right.
When we try to retire, about 20years old is when our horses go
to relax.
Speaker 1 (39:18):
I mean, obviously it depends on each horse, but if
they're doing, healthy and allthat they get to retire and go
home by then.
Most of these carriagecompanies want a retired
deadhead to drive on carriagethough, because they're so laid
back, you know.
Speaker 2 (39:28):
Yeah, we want something with some spirit.
We want animals with somespirit, just because it just
feels confident to have animalsthat are confident with every
step they take.
There are some hills inGettysburg heard of little round
top, maybe that was kind offamous from the movie with the
20th main.
But we do the irish brigade,the irish hill things like that
where you need a little bit ofoomph behind them.
(39:49):
And even in the town, yeah, inthe town of gaysburg, there's
some hills there too who'srunning this while you're gone?
Speaker 1 (39:55):
is anything going on?
Speaker 2 (39:56):
you just took a vacation it's bike week,
motorcycle bike week, andthere's thousands of motorcycles
, and not the horses aren'tafraid of the motorcycles, it's
just the drone of the sound.
You can't communicate and talkwith each other.
So we realize it's not a goodproduct for the tour for the guy
to be able to talk andcommunicate, and it's a good
break right in the middle of ourprime season to go ahead and
(40:17):
let the horses have a break.
We have a break to go get someother stuff done and then we
come back fresh on Mondaymorning.
Speaker 1 (40:22):
So it really worked out good.
Speaker 4 (40:24):
Yeah, that's why, when Jamie first came in contact
with you, it's like, hey, thisis when we're going to be there
and this is when we're leaving.
There's no window for us to beat Altower, yeah.
Speaker 1 (40:33):
I see, yeah Well.
Speaker 4 (40:35):
I wondered about, worked out great, and that's
another thing we just reallyappreciate of you and henry.
Let us come down here and, asyou know, buying horses yourself
, being able to see them anddrive them or be in person with
them, you really get to beunderstanding what you're
getting in and made it nice andwell yeah, and I don't know if
steven has mentioned this, butwe actually put a deposit down
(40:57):
on a different team.
Speaker 3 (40:58):
we were excited to come down and meet and as soon
as we held the lines on the teamthat we bought, we knew, I mean
, that was the team we weregoing home with.
So there's so many good animalshere and so many good teams,
but the best way to do it is tocome here, drive them, take your
time and these guys will answerall your questions.
We had a wonderful experiencewith y'all.
Speaker 4 (41:20):
We drove three teams ourselves and, I think, the
group of people over here fromSan Diego.
They drove eight, ten teams.
Speaker 1 (41:28):
A lot of teams.
Speaker 4 (41:29):
Yeah, because they drove the Halflingers too.
I think that one was just forfun, they drove the Halflingers
around.
I think they're still going tobuy them.
Speaker 1 (41:35):
Oh hey, good for you, he's coming.
Those people are cool peopletoo.
Shout out to Happy Trails,Ponyland, San Diego, California.
We got along super good withthem.
We was going to ship the horsesto them, you know Well, he flew
home.
He called me last night.
He's driving here to get them.
He's coming back Bringing hisfreight liner and his trailer.
(41:56):
We're going to load him up.
I'm going to try to sell him awhole load when he gets back if
you got empty space, you mightas well fill it up.
I'm actually gonna do.
I'm gonna make him do a podcast.
He don't know it yet, but ifyou listen to this, you're gonna
do a podcast with me when youget here.
So shout out to you and I thankyou all so much.
We appreciate all of ourcustomers, all of them.
Speaker 2 (42:17):
One thing steven didn't tell us before we came
down is that they have Airbnbsavailable right here in Casey
County, Kentucky.
That makes it so much easierthan having to drive from
Danville down or some other townthat's all crowded with all
kinds of events.
It would have been nice to beout here in the country and be
able to relax and enjoy thebeautiful knobs of Kentucky.
Speaker 4 (42:36):
You can get more time to spend with your horses that
you buy you all.
Speaker 1 (42:42):
if you're coming in October, you need to reserve our
new Airbnb right across theroad here.
Speaker 4 (42:45):
Okay.
Speaker 1 (42:46):
Get it booked up, unless you want to stay in your
trailer and bring a team orsomething.
Speaker 4 (42:50):
Oh, there you go.
No, I already dumped it in thetrailer as it is.
Speaker 1 (42:59):
But yeah, you need.
Well, we got a bed on thepicture yeah, okay good, you
just have to turn side yeah,diagonal or hang your feet off
the end.
Yeah, you know, I sleep with myfeet off the end of the bed.
I'm not even that tall what doyou have?
two feet in front of you on thetop of the bed I don't know why,
when, ever since I've beenlittle, I always scoot down in
the bed and hang my feet off andmy legs from about right below
(43:21):
my knee down.
I love my feet and legs hangingoff the bed.
I always slept that way.
Speaker 4 (43:25):
Hey, you know what works.
Speaker 1 (43:26):
So you're probably pretty used to it.
Speaker 4 (43:28):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, light diagonal or something like
that.
Speaker 1 (43:32):
Yeah.
For different reasons, but it'sin common Guys, we're going to
wrap this thing up.
It's been a good Sunday morningand we appreciate y'all.
We appreciate you and this hasbeen fun.
And if you're in Gettysburg, gosee these folks Also like their
Facebook Horse Tours ofGettysburg.
Speaker 4 (43:51):
Victorian Carriage.
Yes, sir, is that two differentFacebooks?
Yeah, we actually have threedifferent Facebooks Because we
have the Trail Company asConfederate Trails of Gettysburg
and then the carriage companyas Victorian Carriage Company,
and then Horse Tours ofGettysburg is our main one.
That highlights all the stuffwe do with car tours, walking
tours and stuff like that,because Horse Tours is our big
company.
Speaker 1 (44:11):
You have three different avenues here.
Yes, sir, so if, you want to golike all three, you can.
I'm going to put all three inthe description on this podcast
Also.
I'm going to put all three inthe description on this podcast
Also.
I'm going to put a contactnumber.
Phone number.
Call these guys.
They called a book, a tour.
Is that how that works?
Speaker 4 (44:28):
They can call the book if they would like, but
their online website can walkthem through the whole process
as well.
Perfect Stuff like that.
Speaker 1 (44:35):
We're going to put the website on, we're also going
to tag that YouTube channel andI'm going to issue a challenge
to Spencer and Jamie yourchallenge is issued.
Speaker 4 (44:45):
What's the challenge?
What's our goal?
Speaker 1 (44:47):
A thousand subscribers by October 1st.
Speaker 4 (44:52):
Whoa.
Speaker 1 (44:53):
Okay, you can do it.
You can do it, we'll try.
I know you can yeah okay.
I know you can, and if you needsomebody to make you a
thumbnail or you know, help youdo something, I know somebody
that might be able to do that.
Speaker 4 (45:05):
That'd be awesome.
And question if we reach thatgoal, do we get a free team?
There?
We go Uh-oh, or get a coupon,discount Coupon.
Speaker 2 (45:14):
You got a coupon here , not a free team.
Okay, we'd.
Speaker 4 (45:18):
We'll get a free lunch.
We'll get a free set of harness.
Speaker 1 (45:20):
Oh, a free set of harness.
That works too.
No, you make a YouTube.
You get your YouTube going.
You get 1,000 subscribers byOctober.
I'm going to give you all hastejackets.
Speaker 4 (45:32):
Oh okay, you sure you can make one big enough for me.
Oh yeah, I'm 5XLT.
Speaker 1 (45:38):
Some company makes them.
Okay, I'm 5XLT.
Speaker 3 (45:41):
Some company makes them.
Speaker 4 (45:41):
Oh, yeah, yeah there you go, You're a 5X, 5XLT.
Yeah, it's just shoulders andthe LT that Tall I can fit into
like a 3X, but then it's all acrop top and no one wants to see
that.
Where do you buy your clothes?
Dxl, it's expensive.
Speaker 3 (45:56):
I'm a tent maker, yeah maker.
Speaker 4 (46:03):
Yeah, the amish have a harness shop just for me
actually, but big and tall store.
Yeah, yes, sir, same thing withmy boots.
Speaker 2 (46:05):
It takes like what size are those?
Speaker 4 (46:06):
there's 18, three wide.
So, yeah, they take a while andthey're expensive.
That's why it's like are y'allhearing this?
we got a guy in front of us forthe 18 shoe when I order them,
they I'll run them until they'redone, because they're too
expensive, not to, you know,they probably are.
Yeah, they're carol.
Until they're done becausethey're too expensive.
Not to, they probably are.
Yeah, they're Carolinas.
They're the only boot that Idon't wear cowboy boots at all,
or anything like that becausethey're too narrow, they don't
(46:28):
fit.
Same thing with cowboy hats.
I would love a cowboy hat.
They don't make a big enoughfor my head.
Speaker 1 (46:32):
Oh yeah.
Speaker 4 (46:33):
Fuck it.
Speaker 1 (46:42):
Either they don't fit or it's all over my face and
drowning me.
So american hat company inbowie texas shout out to y'all,
I would love a podcastsponsorship maybe
Speaker 3 (46:49):
possibly I wear american hats every day.
Speaker 1 (46:51):
I'm holding one now in my hand.
I have them hanging all aroundthis room.
We need a sponsorship.
No, I'm joking, I don't want nosponsorship, but american hat
Hat Company.
If you call them, they'll makeyou one.
Oh, okay, if you've got thesize.
Speaker 4 (47:06):
Wow Big, real big.
Speaker 1 (47:08):
Too big.
That's the official size.
Speaker 4 (47:11):
Official size too big squared.
Speaker 1 (47:14):
Guys, thank you for doing this, taking the time this
morning.
I know you've got a long driveahead of you, Yep yep Thanks
With your new team heading outof here.
Speaker 2 (47:21):
Before it gets too hot.
Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1 (47:24):
Well, I think you're going to have a rainy, cool day.
It'll be nice, so it's going tobe a good day to do it.
Speaker 4 (47:29):
We're going to stop at Bucky's on the way in, take
the horses out, get a picture.
It'll be so good I know, we'relooking forward to it.
Speaker 3 (47:37):
One thing about us.
If you didn't learn anythingfrom this podcast, is that we
love Buc-ee's.
Okay, you can take that to thebank.
Speaker 1 (47:46):
What about the brisket sandwich at Buc-ee's?
I've never been.
They're pretty good.
You've never been.
Speaker 4 (47:52):
No, We've only been.
Jamie and I went down to visither mom last winter in Georgia,
and that was the only time.
There's not one close toPennsylvania at all the closest
one they just built.
Speaker 3 (47:59):
Three or four hours away, yeah three or four hours
away.
Speaker 4 (48:03):
So we stopped at one time when we went down to visit
her mom in Georgia, and thenafter that first stop, we were
there four more times before weleft.
So dad's never been there.
So we're going to stop thereand make sure.
And, like I said, it's funny,up where we are, everyone wants
a Buc-ee's, so if you get to go,it's like a celebrity you could
be like oh, look, there's thebeaver, you know, so Are you
going to get your picture madeby the beaver?
(48:24):
Oh yeah, I already have you guys.
Show them the one picture whenwe get done.
Speaker 1 (48:28):
You're taller than the beaver Way taller.
Speaker 4 (48:37):
Oh yeah, I don't know .
If the let's get that close, gohome.
Speaker 1 (48:40):
It would be some good advertisement it would, oh yeah
yeah, that would be kind ofcool.
Thank you for having us.
Speaker 3 (48:46):
You had a great time and we're already looking
forward to buying another team.
Speaker 1 (48:49):
Yeah I appreciate y'all, and if we can help
anybody out there else too, youknow we sell horses every day,
so you can check out our websiteat
wwwdrafthorsesandmulesforsalecom.
Also follow us on Facebook,twitter, tiktok, instagram.
The whole nine yards, and mywife does a stellar job running
(49:10):
all that social media.
Shout out to you, elizabeth,thank you, I appreciate it, and
a shout out to Henry and hisfamily for helping make all this
possible too, and thank you.
Speaker 3 (49:21):
Thank you, Steve Horse.
Speaker 4 (49:21):
Tours of Gettysburg.
Speaker 1 (49:23):
Yeah, and be sure to follow their social media.
And everybody stay tuned forSpencer and his big YouTube
channel.
That's going to happen.
And we're going to support him.
Go ahead and go to Horse Toursof Gettysburg on YouTube now.
Click that subscribe andcomment on one of his older
videos that you've seen him orheard of him on Harness Up
Podcast.
Thank you all.
God bless.
(49:43):
You have a wonderful Sunday.
Go to your church, we're goingto go to ours and we'll see you
soon.
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